Category: Digital Marketing

Marketing is the quick shag, PR is the long-term relationship

In doing a video interview with Niall I uttered something like the title of this blog post. He has promised to edit the video to make me look like a tool. Minutes in the editing suite so… I don’t know is that statement correct.

From what I can see people look at marketing in terms of campaigns, short sharp jousts with the world and then they’re over and done with. Cigarette time. Look at all those “micro” and “mini” sites that are out there from marketing campaigns and they’re just gathering web dust now. Such a waste really. It’s all lust with these interactions.

Then we have the idea of PR being about building relationships between companies and individuals or people with authority and/or influence. Building those kind of relationships takes more work and time but if we keep with the analogy, don’t a lot of long-term relationships become rather boring? Even when the lust turns to love? Will a mistress pop up from time to time? Will there be a divorce?

Surely though with the web and the always-on, always some kind of connection to people vibe, the fun and energy of the marketing jousts can be worked into something longer term and into relationship territory. I’m looking at the brilliant marketing concepts from Burker King of late and again and again they bring something fun out and people are anticipating them. Yet, where is the central hub for fans of Burger King campaigns? They could actually gain super fans if they so wanted by creating that hub. What powers Apple fans and the anticipation of a new product could actually be applied to BK’s odd marketing and bring it under the wing of PR.

"Lingua" by Jim Sanborn
Photo owned by dbking (cc)

You’re all media companies now Dave

A recent Times article pretty much was a copy and paste job from a blog post from Facebook. Who needs to send out press releases when you know a blog post will get the attention of the world? Steve Jobs did it last week too.

If you’re going to be doing business, you’re going to have to have an online element. No matter who you are, no matter what your product. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a newspaper-type organisation or do podcasts or videos but your current and future clients expect interactions that are more than a dull brochure-like website or a phone call or a replied-to email. With the current masses expecting more interactivity and a more personal relationship with who they buy from, it’s time to gear up.

Brick code
Photo owned by hiler2002 (cc)

You’re going to have to do Online Marketing and you’re going to have to do Online PR but perhaps you’re doing this and unaware that what you’re doing has a name. You’ll have to create content in various formats, be it blog posts, video tutorials, Flickr uploads and you’ll have to engage with people not just in the short term but over the course of your business life. This is how you’re a media company. When customers want to ask you something they should be able to find you where they are, not just where you are. As important, if not moreso though is that their peers that they ask should know your company and products and do the work of marketing on your behalf because they have some kind of relationship with you already.

Yes it means more work or maybe it just means you have to be cleverer with your existing resources. The payoff though is that you’ll have broader reach over space and time. Do you need to do it? I think yes but then you don’t need to be in the Golden Pages or have a phone either and you might still keep going.

Again, being a media company now doesn’t mean being a content producer, you can get others to do that but you do need to know that you are in the media, you are the media, you are working with the media.

*You’re my wife now Dave comes from The League Of Gentlemen

The Definitive list of “influencers” in Irish Blogging

It’s all of them!

Well it is.

White Bread, 1964, oil on canvas by James Rosenquist
Photo owned by cliff1066 (cc)

There are a few ways of measuring “influencers” in Irish Blogging.

You could measure using traffic.

Though right now unless people open up their stats (My personal blog over on Mulley.net has public stats, see bottom of the page) you can’t get accurate stats. Niall has opened up his too. Sites like Alexa might help. Paul created a list of 179 Irish blogs and their traffic estimates using Alexa so this might give you a snapshot.

Google Trends for websites can help out there too or even Google Adplanner.

You could measure using Technorati.

Ye wha? Technorati is a bit of a blog search engine and a blog ranking thingymajig. I’m not sure that it knows what it is anymore but it does rank blogs by the numbers of links that they have and gives you a rank compared to others. If a lot of websites link to you then this is a measure of value, a rough one but a measure. Google started off with the idea that links were quite important and still basically believe that.

You can use Technorati to compare the rank of one blog to another, the lower the rank, the more “powerful” the blog. Justin Mason created a handy resource a while back for Irish Blogs that allows you to see a list of the best ranked Irish Blogs. It’s here.

But in a democratic world…

Influence online is about getting your voice heard, not how loud the voice is. The truth will out, all comments trickle down, out and up eventually.

At the recent IIA Social Media Working Group feedback forum on their Blogging Whitepaper I believe someone suggested (I tuned in via Twitter) that you check out those blogs talking about you and if a response is needed (I guess if someone is complaining about your service) then create a response plan based on their Technorati influence. Picking the most influential ones to respond to and cutting off the rest. That’s oldschool thinking there.

Every single blog has the potential to be the next big player, the influencer of an influencer. If a blog has a single reader or subscriber or can be found on Google then they should get a response. Besides which, if someone takes the time to write about your product, it should be worth responding to no matter what. Naturally they are exceptions. Fools exist, giving them air wastes more air.

Someone suggested you wouldn’t have the time or resources to respond to all bloggers. Make some. Blogging is democratic and bloggers respect and enjoy opinions from other bloggers with all sizes of audiences. If you respond to the top 20 bloggers based on traffic or Technorati rank and no more, what about that blogger in the same niche you ignored? Are they subscribed to by an “influencer”? Then you’re hosed if they are, it’ll trickle up.

Anyway, surely if the world is talking about your product you’re either doing something really really good or really really bad?

Ketchup bottle, NYC, December 2008
Photo owned by mattkrause1969 (cc)

Obviously we don’t like the word “influencer”

But if it’s not responding to bloggers but working with bloggers, what should you be doing? Well, what area are you doing Online PR or Online Marketing in? Find Irish blogs that match that. You’ll find them by searching for keywords on IrishBlogs.ie.

Of course there’s a whole other blog post about the best way to work with bloggers and you’ll read it here soon but read this PDF as homework first. It’s from Shift Communications and is about the best one pager on how to work with and approach bloggers.

Facebook doubles in size in Ireland in 12 months – 400k in January 09

Using Facebook’s ad system we can now see that Facebook in Ireland has doubled in size in 12 months, going from just under 200,000 users in January 2008 to 400,980 Irish users in January 2009.

The growth pattern in numbers for Facebook users in Ireland:
January 2007 7,000 users in Ireland
October 2007 131,000 users in Ireland
January 2008 Under 200,000 users in Ireland
April 2008 – 224,820 users in Ireland
January 2009 400,980 users in Ireland

More stats:
400,980 users in Ireland

387,580 registered their gender
Male 169,280
Female 218,240

Relationship status: 223,520 registered their status
Single 80,060
In a relationship 75,960
Engaged 14,560
Married 52,820

Ages:
Age 21 to 35 – 301,140 75.1%
Age 25 and up – 275,660 68.9%
Age 30 and up – 148,320 36.9%
Age 18 and under 17,540 4.4%

“We could not have bought the results achieved with traditional media” – 31 Days of the Dragon

Found this via Kerry. HP did a clever campaign giving away 31 pieces of kit and the reaction was fantastic. Here are their slides talking about the campaign:

Word-of-mouth case study: HP 31 Days of the Dragon

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: word-of-mouth buzz)

Some blurbs from the slides:

  • “We could not have bought the results achieved with traditional media”
  • “We really know them at a personal level – we consider each other friends, not just cards in a rolodex”
  • “We spent over a year demonstrating that we were willing to do the right things for, with and by them and therefore earned their trust”
  • “They helped design the rules and manage and organise each other – this was more of a partnership than a program”
  • “By allowing the bloggers to design their own contest and then giving them a unit to give away, we removed a lot of the legal and internal approvals required for such a campaign”

Food for thought folks!

O2’s Irish Facebook and Bebo Apps that make consumers some cash

Yesterday I got an invite to install the O2 Ireland “Pass it on” Facebook Application (which also works in Bebo).

O2 App on Facebook

The idea is that if you send invites to your friends you’ll get money. 50 cents of credit that is. On Facebook it says you can send 4 invites a week but in the Terms and Conditions on their site it says 2 invites per week. If one of these friends applies for a free SIM card then you get €1. If a friend gets 20 quid in credit then you get a fiver in credit but the murky T&Cs say they must use the app themselves?

c) Level 3: €5.00 will be rewarded to you the first time that a friend that you invited who ordered a SIM through the member get member service purchases credit worth €20 or more. This friend MUST enter their new O2 mobile number into the application for this reward to be applied.

So either you can earn 2 X (€0.5 + €1 +€5) = €13 a week or else 4 X (€0.5 + €1 +€5) = €26 a week. The maximum you can earn is €300 in 6 months. Which is 46 friends.

Without evening checking I would think that takeup on Bebo is going to be a lot better than on Facebook. Looking at the age demographic and employment demographic for Facebook, they are going to have more people on contract than on credit phones and they won’t be able to move people as easily to a credit phone either. Bebo of course is different. And the numbers for Facebook and this app: Users:122 monthly active users

o2 Ireland Bebo App

When you look at the same application on Bebo: 1832 users. You can see who they are too. Reading the comments there does seem to be a few issues with the Bebo App platform though. The O2 Application has been on Bebo since March but the numbers are still very impressive. If each install resulted in 4 invites and say 2 sims being sent out per App install then that’s 3,664 potential new customers, €3,664 in credit (not real money) being given back for invites and €3,664 in credit when the SIMs were delivered. Given the average spend for those with credit phones, it doesn’t sound like a bad investment, once the cost of building the app wasn’t too much. Judging by the interaction on the Bebo Profile of the app you’d have to pay for a part-time resource too. 83 comments on the profile, many from O2 themselves.

A nice move though by O2 but I’d have considered it wiser for a different type of campaign on Facebook compared to Bebo.

Would you do anything differently with this? How would you target those you want to sign up for contracts? Offer them premium services?

Merry Christmas – Our gift to you for 2009

The feedback about the Online PR post has been extensive in the past 24 hours, thank you for that. It’s been put to me that I need to put my money where my mouth is or some other cliché and so I will. It’s not enough for bloggers (I’m one of them!) to bleat on their blogs about what they want from PR people and Marketing people and how they want to be approached, if they want to be approached. Opt in remember!

Papas noel gaiteros
Photo owned by DrZito (cc)

So I’m offering to run an event in mid-January where bloggers that are interested (I’ll provide booze and cake to bribe them!) can come along and meet up with PR and Marketing people who can mingle with them and get their feedback on campaigns or thoughts they had on how to engage with the online community which includes bloggers, social networkers and all the rest. I would like to see more PR and Marketing people communicating with Irish bloggers who are interested in these communications and having these companies listen to what the online people think and to try and work with these onliners to get them what they want.

Want to come along? Leave a comment below, be you a blogger or a PR/Marketing type.

Lane
Photo owned by tomeppy (cc)

Hijacking a Brandjack – How would you do the Pat the Baker campaign?

Brand-jacking is the idea of taking a brand and without permission going off using it to promote yourself. Here’s another definition:

Brand-jacking happens when a third party hitches a ride on a brand’s fame, positioning and slogan and uses them for its communications’ own purposes – whilst undermining the brand’s reputation in the process

At the recent BarCamp, Alexia Golez and Pat Phelan had decided to take a few brands and build a whole online marketing campaign for them, whether they liked it or not. There is nothing malicious in this, the idea is to actually get more coverage for a brand but the ambassadors doing it are unofficial. I like that idea. You see many design and photoshop challenges getting people to redesign sites or logos and it is a way of people showing off their abilities. So I’m hijacking this great idea.

You may have heard of the Pat the Baker Bebo campaign, apparently me blogging about it made people buy sliced pans.

MySpace Music Party - Bryan Thatcher of Empressr and Michael Birch Co-Founder of Bebo
Photo owned by b_d_solis (cc)

If you were to run the Pat the Baker “online marketing ” campaign, what would you do?

With all the tools out there now, many of them free, what ways would you engage with the public? Blogs, Facebook, Bebo, Google Ads, special games, advertising or clever hook-ups with websites like Boards.ie and Rollercoaster.ie?

There is no prize for this, no reward except showing off your knowledge and skills here. If this works, well I might turn it into a regular thing on this blog. I’m sure many companies might volunteer to be the mark for the brandjack.

Niall Harbison on the benefits of Twitter and Blogs and Vids

Very good talk at Connector by Niall Harbison

This is a very good talk giving a layperson’s guide to how blogs, videos, social networking etc. can help a business and how to go about doing it. Like how Niall warns that success is not going to be overnight. It won’t be. Remember too Niall is a trained chef that came into this area from that business and I think with that background is probably more qualified to talk to businesses on what to do that those that claim their experts just because they have a blog. (I’m looking at you here Mulley)