Archive for February, 2008

Here are Seven Quick Ways to Fail at Blogging

Feb 29

Posted by Richard Telofski in Blogs | No Comments

Let me tell you seven (7) quick ways to fail at blog marketing.

Write your blog posts in standard marketing lingo. Tell the reader how great your company, product, or service is. You’ll drive readers away in droves.
Don’t enable comments. Do this and you’ll see failure getting larger and larger in your business rear-view mirror.
Ignore comments. If you don’t take the failure method recommended above in #2 and do enable comments, then if you ignore them, the bad comments along with the good, you’ll be sure to annoy your readers and they’ll stop reading your blog. They might even stop patronizing your business.
Don’t install an anti-spam plug-in. Let all those ads for car dealerships and prescription drugs designed to make you a hot lover appear on your blog.
Appoint the person in your company with the worst writing skills as the company blogger.
Spam other blogs with useless comments.
Live with unrealistically high expectations. Think that blogging will solve all of your company’s problems. Expect 50 million unique visitors in the first two weeks of your blog. Be very disappointed when that doesn’t happen.

If you take all seven of these suggestions, I can just about guarantee that you won’t be satisfied with your blog marketing effort. Then you’ll be able to join all those “I told you so” naysayers out there.

Wouldn’t that be comfortable?

Share on Facebook

Who Wants to Be a Brand Manager?

Feb 29

Posted by Richard Telofski in Strategy | No Comments

The answer is: Everyone.

Everyone that works at a company, large or small or micro, has a hand in how the company’s brand of product or service is perceived by the marketplace. Why is that?

Because a brand is simply a name that is applied to a collection of product attributes and features that are bundled together to meet a customer’s needs or to solve their problems. The brand quickly communicates a certain level of quality to the marketplace. Everyone who works at a company contributes to the final level of quality that the company pushes out the door.

But remember. The answer to our question “Who Wants to Be a Brand Manager?” is Everyone. Today, it’s not only everyone who works in a company that is the brand manager, but it’s also the customers that buy the products or services who contribute to the management of the brand. That is to say, it is the marketplace that helps to communicate the level of quality of a particular product or service. And not just through economic votes, meaning sales.

Through social media, everyone and anyone can become a “virtual brand manager,” communicating certain pieces of information about the product or service. Hopefully, all of that information will be true, but it’s almost inevitable that total truth won’t be achieved.

Because with social media everyone can now be a brand manager, it’s imperative that companies expand their influence into the realm of social media to ensure that their brands are not being redefined by the unofficial virtual brand managers out there. If redefinition is occurring, then it is very important that the company counteract any inaccurate redefinition.

Share on Facebook

What Everybody Should Know About “The Ball Ticket” Method

Feb 28

Posted by Richard Telofski in Tactics | No Comments

This is a little known story about how some B2B salespeople “whore” themselves out to prospects and customers. (Pardon my language, but it’s the most descriptive term I could conjure up.)

Back when I was a young fresh face on the business scene, I was a salesman for an industrial transportation company known as a piggyback consolidator. Piggyback. You know. Those truck trailers that are put on railroad flatbeds and shipped long distances. I worked for a consolidation (wholesale) company that sold space to truckload shippers transporting their goods across country.

Most of my competitors were trucking companies, driving heavy loads nationwide. This was in the very early 1980s, right after trucking rate deregulation, and most all of the trucking salesmen were still accustomed to competing on everything except price.

What they would do is walk into the traffic manager’s office of a large manufacturer and say the following, “Here are my rates, here are some ball tickets, let’s go to lunch.” Not much, if any, discussion about actual business.

I thought this approach was stupid, quite frankly. But it wasn’t they who were stupid. I didn’t see that what they were trying to do was develop a relationship with their prospect, rather than sell them on the features of their service. As I got more experienced, and lost sales to these guys, a lot of sales, I began to see the value of developing a relationship with the prospect prior to attempting a sale, or improving an existing relationship with existing customers. And the way that was done was by giving them something extra, like the ball tickets.

That’s what social media is about. A relationship and something extra. By establishing a conversation with your customers via social media, they’ll start to know your company as a “person” rather than just a faceless entity. You’ll develop a relationship. What’s the extra?

Well, no actual ball tickets need be exchanged. (I suppose they could be, but it’s really not necessary.) The extra is that your company is going out of its way to develop this relationship when your competitors are not. (Like me, who wasn’t giving out any ball tickets.) Customers will notice that.

So what are your customers and prospects going to do? If my experience is any indicator, they’ll take the ball tickets. They’ll opt for the relationship.

* * *

If you liked this post, Stumble us and/or subscribe to our feed.

Share on Facebook

Social Media Looks Good in a Recession

Feb 28

Posted by Richard Telofski in Strategy | No Comments

If you’re a businessperson sweating the specter of an upcoming recession, read on.

An article appeared in Adweek on Wednesday, 2/6/08, forecasting that social media spending would likely increase, at the expense of traditional media, during any upcoming recession.

The article points out what I’ve been saying all along; that setting up social media initiatives for business is a relatively low-cost, yet effective, undertaking. The article sights an example of a major manufacturer seeing a social media program being four times more effective than a similar program in traditional media. That’s a heck of an improvement.

Given that kind of return it’s hard to argue about using social media in any kind of economy, growing or recessionary.

Now as far a recession actually occurring, that is still anyone’s guess. I’m not sure if it’s going to happen. What I am sure of, though, is that if we keep talking about it as approaching, and if the mainstream media keep telling us that a recession is coming or that we may already be in one, then a recession is what we’ll get.

The take-away here is that social media are very cost effective and can be used successfully in any economic environment.

Share on Facebook

Copyright and Trademark Violations Galore

Feb 27

Posted by Richard Telofski in Blogs | No Comments

That there are a lot of people out there in the blogosphere playing fast and loose with the copyrights and trademarks of others is no secret. Just punch into a search engine the terms “trademark violations on blogs” or “copyright violations on blogs” and you’ll be greeted with so many results (I got over 1.5 million as of the day of this writing) you’d definitely consider not reading most of them.

In the course of my work, as I go through different blogs I catch what seem to me to be good cases for either copyright or trademark violations. During those visits, it occurs to me that even though the United States has the most lawyers in the world, if only a small portion of these cases were pursued, the lawyers would all have a difficult time keeping up with all the infringement cases out there. It also occurs to me that many of these bloggers probably don’t even realize that they are committing these no-no’s because they think that they are on the electronic equivalent of the American street corner talking with friends and can say anything, anyway, they like. They don’t realize that they are actually in the publishing business.

Bloggers are actually publishers, and should be subject to the law of publishing.

Now, understand this. I’m not a lawyer. I’m just a layman with a very keen interest in this issue. Having read a great deal on this topic, and having conferred with my company’s legal counsel on these issues more than once, I think I’ve got a pretty good understanding of the topic. Some sources I’ve used may be found here and here. Of course, you could always get off the web for a while and read a book. One book I’ve found a lot of answers in can be found here.

I take great care to see that my company doesn’t make the same, and I’ll use this term benevolently, “mistakes” as other blogs out there. What I recommend is that you do the same. If you’re considering using social media, and blogs in particular, I recommend a little sit-down with your company’s legal counsel.

Now you may think, “Aw come on, Rich. It’s only blogging. It’s just the web. Nobody takes this stuff seriously.” Well, if “they” don’t take this stuff seriously, why are you on the web in the first place?

It’s not just blogging. Company employment of social media is the usage of another marketing communications medium and should be approached with the same seriousness and devotion to resources as any other project which your company would undertake.

Many other company projects begin with consulting legal counsel. Why shouldn’t corporate blogging?

Doing so can not only make your blogging effort more effective, it will also let you sleep at night.

* * *

If you liked this post, Stumble us and/or subscribe to our feed.

Share on Facebook

Eschewing Traditional Marketing Programs

Feb 27

Posted by Richard Telofski in Strategy | No Comments

Eschewing. Is that the Spanish translation of the word “chewing?” Not quite. Read on.

There’s been much talk in the marketing strategy blogosphere about saving money on traditional marketing tactics (ads, PR, direct mail, etc.) when blogs and other social media are employed in a company’s marketing mix. In other words, eschewing or abandoning these other forms of marketing communications because blogging, for example and for gosh sakes, is almost free.

Hold on for a moment.

It’s true that blogs, in terms of out-of-pocket expense, are less costly than other traditional marketing communications forms such as those mentioned above. But blogs are expensive in terms of implicit costs, or costs that are not directly tracked. Blogs require time. Lots of time in order to use them correctly. Someone in the company needs to be devoted to the social media, or even just the blog, effort. So much of the expense of blogs or social media in general will be hidden within salary expense.

Blogging and social media are additional forms of marketing communications that can be used by companies. They have a cost. No one should be thinking of deleting one in favor of the other just to run wild on a cost improvement program.

Instead, social media and blogs should be used together with other forms of marketing communications, so that each complements the others.

* * *

If you liked this post, Stumble us and/or subscribe to our feed.

Share on Facebook

It’s About . . . Ya Know . . . Honesty.

Feb 26

Posted by Richard Telofski in Strategy, Truth | No Comments

This really isn’t a difficult concept. Think about it this way.

Everyone of us has belonged to a group, a club, a team, a unit, a family, at some point in our lives. What we can remember most vividly from that time is a sense of belonging; and with that sense of belonging we remember loyalty.

Loyalty.

The loyalty is generated from common trust within the group. The trust is generated from honesty experienced by the “family” members, and knowing where they stand at all times. The honesty is understood through communication within the group.

Companies talk incessantly about customer loyalty and how they can develop it. Obviously customer loyalty is something in which every company should have interest. But many do little to actually develop it. Why not? Because they can’t address the communications problem.

As companies get larger, they become farther removed from their customer and progressively unable to communicate, effectively, with them. Blogs can help solve this problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Blogs aren’t panaceas for the problem of increasing customer communications. But they can help most companies take the trip down the road toward the villages of honesty, trust, and loyalty, reaping the benefits at the end of that journey. But the key here is honesty.

Honesty in blog communications is paramount. Without it, readers (read that as prospects and customers) will just see through the bogus effort, scratch you off, and move on to the next blogger and/or company. In fact if performed without honesty foremost, company blog communications could actually hurt your business more than help it.

With honest blog posts, the company can build trust and with it the loyal community of recurring customers that all companies covet.

It’s not so difficult.

* * *

If you liked this post, Stumble us and/or subscribe to our feed.

Share on Facebook