Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Your Product is Your Marketing

Product and marketing

Your Product is your best form of Marketing.

Have you played the telephone game? You know the one where one person whispers a sentence and by the end it gets all garbled? Well I’m at the end of this chain except with the advent of copy and paste the message is no longer lost. I found the below quote from Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon) on Mitch Joels blog (who found it on another blog… who found it somewhere else). The bottom line is the quote is accurate…

“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”

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Creating For the 10%

Create for the 10% and the other 90 will tolerate it…

I wanted to share some great insight I learned while listening to Russ Roberts on the EconTalk podcast interview his long time friend Gary Belsky, Editor-in-Chief at ESPN The Magazine. Towards the end of the interview Gary mentions:

I tell staff be more of who you are and what you’d want to see as a sports fan. It’s my job to make this judgment–will at least 10% of our readers like it and will the other 90% not be offended? (Gary Belsky)

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Abraham Lincoln and Social Media

When Abraham Lincoln was faced with keeping the United States together during the Civil War he was fortunate to have a new technology– the Telegraph. For history buffs this historical record gives us amazing insight into the war and the mind of President Lincoln himself. President Lincoln never kept a diary but the his thanks to his telegraph records we get a peek at his thoughts and it reveals how comfortable he was with this new technology.

What spurred these thoughts for me was I recently watched a great program on C-Span (Mr. Lincolns T-Mails) from Tom Wheeler where he speaks about his book, “Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.”

During this time the telegraph was a new device (used primarily by the financial industry) and no national leader during wartime had ever had technology access to such a powerful communication device. Suddenly it was possible to get a fast and fuller view of the battlefield from every theater of engagement. The Telegraph provided Lincoln with the thoughts of his generals, reports from spy’s, and in some cases near instant reports from long away battlefields. Quite a few historians have argued this tipped the balance of power for the President and his cause to re-unify the nation.

That’s where I thought about today, what new communication technology do we have at our hands?

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The Ultimate List of Trending, Real Time Search and Social Search Websites

I spend a good amount of time checking out various websites, tools, and systems. I’ve built up my own bookmarking system so I can easily find websites and services that seem promising or hold a specific purpose. Today I’d like to share with you my list of social search websites, real time search engines, and new media/social media trending tools.

We have used this list for pretty much everything but what we have found that it can be really powerful for finding your target market in digital media. You can Find out

  • Exactly what they talk about
  • What makes them take action
  • Where they hang out online
  • Trending topics

The limits are endless to the information you can gather about your target market.

So we took it a step further…

We created two examples [video] so you can see exactly how you can use the 41 real-time search tools to find your market and discover the exact message you need to create in order to connect with them and make them take action around you, your product, or your business ( Get Access ).

I should also mention that while this is a pretty big list is it in no way complete.  I’ve really focused on providing the top valuable tools out there. I thought about ordering them in some cohesive way but many of these sites are branching out beyond their original purpose, so that became somewhat cumbersome.

I’ve linked to all the sites by the headline and image below. Also if I’ve missed any that you think should be on this list please leave a comment below or reach out to us on Twitter. I will also mention the updates all the way at the bottom.

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This Weeks Best Posts and Commentary

First up posts like this always give me a little more insight, so this is well worth the read…More at 15 Critical Business Success Tips after Five Years in Business [with special giveaway]

New Facebook Design Strategy

The New Facebook Pages design is here. For anyone in the Facebook marketing world, this means a lot of major changes. If you took advantage of the features of the timeline design for personal profiles, then the pages will feel similar. This guide will help you find what you’re going to like and hate about Facebook’s latest updates to pages, including how your brand or business can adapt….More at The Marketer’s Guide to the New Facebook Pages

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Social Media Kills Brain Cells [mock study]

Okay, first I’ve been studying social media. Well not formally and not with in the triple blind and an army of PHD’s or lab rats kind of way. But rest assured I’ve been studying what it does to businesses and professionals.

My study has concluded that it kills brain cells–and that’s a bad thing. I thought I heard a few years ago that brain cells grow back but I wasn’t able to find any search results that helped:

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Intent and Selling in Social Media

This post is for someone looking to sell a product or service with social media engagement. Yes I know social media is not for selling– but any professional or business who is spending time and money on earned media is expecting some form of ROI.

When marketing for someone to buy your product or service you are always looking for ways to find or move a buyer’s intent. Intent to learn more about your product or more important the intent to purchase.
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Social PPC Network MyLikes

We’ve been testing out a new (or newer) social advertising platform called MyLikes. We see these pop up every so often and like to dive in to see if they have potential.

Sure PPC within the stream of a social network might seem like spam (I would kind of agree) but we are starting to see more and more users and influencers take to this model.

Watch Video Overview Below

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How to Keep Up With Technology

Would someone in Pompeii use a cell phone?

Have you asked yourself how do I keep up with technology and new media when it is moving so fast? Just yesterday it was all about Myspace, then YouTube, then Facebook, then Twitter…

Soon the IPad is going to released and then you will see copycat devices follow slowly…

A secret I use to keep focused on the technology that I should follow comes down to always asking myself one question (or watch video below): read more →