The Engaging Brand

We don't learn in straight lines...

Social media is great for reaching out to people but it is also great for reaching out to yourself...

What do I mean by that!

We don't learn in straight lines....

We may wish that we learn in straight lines as that would be so much easier but we rarely do...

That is where social media helps me, it gives a meaning to my circular or random path to learning more...it allows me to discuss, share, consume and try....it links the dots...

So my learning journey may not be straight, but at least it is connected and even better it adds that reflective learning element

Show 360 - Brand Champions

Show 360 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen for free, you don't need to download anything and all explained at the end of the post. 

Ian Buckingham joins Anna Farmery to talk about the Brand Champions - his new business book.

We discuss

• Can you create brand champions or do you create a culture to foster brand champions?
• Do you treat employees as customers? Do you market to your employees? Does internal marketing work?
• The role of leadership and of management in employee engagement.
• Who are the MOST important people in any business?
• How brand champions should not be agents of PR
• How to evolve a brand champion culture
• What are the characteristics of brand champions
• Practical steps to create brand champion conditions

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter, leave a message at The Engaging Brand Fan Page or join me on to discuss it on Google+  where we may get some of the authors involved!

How you can listen to The Engaging Brand

1) You can listen on your PC now without downloading any software just click hear to listen to the latest marketing podcast

2) You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or

3) If you use a different podcatcher then you can subscribe using the following RSS Feed

Google Update: Fresh? Or Recycled?

The latest major Google update, widely known as "Google Fresh," has sent the Internet marketing world into a frenzy of speculation and near panic.

Today in a guest post from the wonderful Joseph Baker, we look at the marketing implications of this latest update.

Every time Google releases a substantial update, search results are thrown into  disarray as webmasters move to adapt to the edicts handed down from the Emperor of Mountain View. Because many businesses today, particularly those without a brick and mortar presence, indirectly rely on traffic from Google for their livelihoods, they have to adapt quickly to the search giant's shifts or be crushed under its heel.

Like an inventor attempting to create a rapid prototype before his competitors begin flooding the market with similar products, websites impacted by updates like Panda and Fresh have to react quickly, developing new methods before they begin losing out to competitors.

Estimated to impact between 6 and 35 percent of web searches, Fresh will prioritize recent news items over older ones. The implications behind this change are staggering and will change the face of both SEO and company branding from now on. By emphasizing timeliness, Google has begun mixing SEO and PR, hoping to brew a potion that will give the search engine a greater ability to deliver relevant results when it matters. Two main attributes must be factored into a strategy meant to harness the power of Fresh to carry a site into the top tier:

1. producing regular, timely content
2. and crafting quality, relevant content.

Neither aspect will provide enough of a push on its own, but when combined, they build on each other exponentially, creating a swell that savvy webmasters can ride into success with Fresh.

Building the Brand

Branding is an all-important aspect of marketing, both online and off. When a company works on its brand, it's not just switching logos and adopting a new slogan; it's burrowing deep into the minds of consumers, creating an association on a subconscious level.

Google Fresh will affect companies' branding efforts by rewarding companies with regular, quality content and penalizing those without. Every blog post, press release and news article from the company will gain higher SEO value. Reaching out to the community for new, user-generated content will not only spur higher brand identification and trust, but will also provide Google with the content it expects from websites that deserve to rank in the upper echelons of search.

Regular Content

The update emphasizes the timeliness of content updates on websites. When a major event happens, getting content up quickly will signal to Google that the site is serious about providing groundbreaking information to consumers and will help ingratiate the site to the search engine's crawlers.

In addition to providing fast updates, ensuring regularity of updates will keep the big G happy. By posting regular updates to a blog--and including timestamps to point out to Google the age of the article--websites show a commitment to creating a sustainable, dedicated information platform.

Quality Content

The first major push for well-written, relevant content came back in the spring with the Panda algorithm update that saw massive shifts in content creation. No longer could websites be stuffed with disparate articles and hope to rise to the coveted first page on Google.

The emphasis on quality, relevant content has only been strengthened by Fresh, though it may not seem that way at first glance. While it's true that a site pushing out a dozen mediocre updates per day will see gains from Fresh, they won't see the kinds of gains they might if they focused on regular updates of high quality, gaining the best of both worlds.

If enough sites work towards optimizing content for both Panda and Fresh, there will be a deluge of high quality, prompt posts, aiding the website's search engine rankings and providing useful, engaging content to readers.

It's a win-win.

(Thanks Joe and as part of promoting other people's thoughts I blog articles each weekend from guest authors...if you want to send me your thoughts then email me at anna@theengagingbrand.com)

 

Why your (H)AND should strike your BUT(T)

Words are in many ways the most powerful tool, in fact weapon that the world has at its disposal.

Words can raise people up, words can cut people down. Words can create fear, words can make you cry with love.....

Yet because words are so common, because words are so easy to use - we forget their power.

Here is an example

I agree with your idea BUT I don't think it will work

I agree with your idea AND I would like to learn more about how you think it will work

Words can inspire the emotion you want to create - you need to decide beforehand which emotion that is!

BUT rarely produces anything BUT defensiveness - whether you mean to or not

AND most often produces a constructive conversation

I remember a sentence Dad used to say....

Strike your BUT Anna with your AND

Why Social Media Helps My Reality

I was lucky as a youngster  - Dad loved to choose a topic then debate it. If I had one viewpoint, irrelevant of his own thoughts he would argue the opposite. He believed that to come to a true decision you needed to full understand both sides then draw your OWN conclusion.

When I look around today, too often do I see 'our reality' constructed by third parties, not necessarily deliberately but a function of modern times. 

24 hours of news means a flow of stories, flow of interviews, a flow of reality construction. Reality shows (so badly named as there is nothing real involved!) help create a constructed reality that celebrity is success, or talent shows editing illustrates the side of the person they want you to see etc etc

Social media has helped in so many ways but I think it can help with the construction of reality. Helping others understand their reality better through information, helping discussion through ideas, helping you to form your opinions and ideas through your content....

Social media is by its very nature - two way, it is people joining together round social objects...such as ideas, values or causes.

Social media can be your debating chamber, a debate that helps you construct your own reality.....

Social media can be your customers debating chamber, a debate that helps them construct their own reality.....emphasis on helps! Question for you...

Are you constructing a reality you want consumers to believe or creating social media to help them construct their own reality which is much more meaningful

How to Go Off-Topic in Social Media

There's nothing new about networking to build business relationships, but social media has turned networking on its head by allowing businesses and customers to connect on new levels. Unlike advertising, which is built around one-way commercial messages, social media promotes two-way conversations and relationships.

Many businesses recognize the potential of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, but many are also at a loss about how to tap into the real power of social media.

• How can they go beyond a one-way advertising campaign launched through social media and build interest in their brand? 
• How can they foster a community of fans and followers?
• How can they create buzz around their brand?

A large part of the answer to these questions involves some old-fashioned practices: building trust and credibility. People are more likely to connect with what appears to be a real person. They want to be able to associate a face with an online presence (which is why a real head-shot photo associated with a Facebook or Twitter account trumps an avatar or anonymous icon). They're interested in learning more about the leaders of a business through online bios and "About Us" content.

Once a business begins to build a network of followers, there's a tendency to barrage them each day with multiple messages about the business. Some followers may welcome sales and marketing messages, but to others this may feel like little more than a commercial campaign that has been launched through social media. Instead of treating social media like a billboard for posting advertisements, it's important to respond to comments and foster conversation by interacting with the social media community.

Going off-topic is another way to personalize your online presence. Creating posts about a favorite charity, a hobby or recent industry events will invite commentary from followers. Interesting content tends to be retweeted and cross-linked, helping to build your credibility and turn followers into fans. Besides creating interesting content, make a habit of following people who follow you, retweeting them and adding comments to their content. Show that you have an interest in things outside your own business agenda.

Some businesses have even discovered that they can put an advertising campaign in the hands of fans and followers. A large-scale example is how PepsiCo used social media to launch its Pepsi Refresh Project, shifting brand focus from beverages to funding projects for social good. The project includes a website that allows anyone to post and vote on a project. Participants are encouraged to spread the word and campaign for votes by promoting their causes on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to funding projects for social change (PepsiCo distributed $20 million in project grants in 2010), the Refresh Project replaced a large part of PepsiCo's more traditional advertising. Both the advertising and social media worlds are watching the Refresh Project with interest to see whether the 70 million votes cast on the official website will result in increased sales for PepsiCo's products.

A more obviously successful social media advertising campaign was Proctor & Gamble's rebranding of its old school Old Spice aftershave. In 2010, actor Isaiah Mustafa (the "Old Spice Guy" from television commercials), appeared in a series of 186 YouTube videos. Each video was a response to an Internet comment about the Old Spice Guy. The series was hilarious and since the product was not directly mentioned, the effect was one of pure entertainment. Although the campaign has ended, the videos continue to amass thousands of views.

These examples can serve as inspiration for smaller businesses. Using social media for advertising and business promotion is new territory that is still being explored.

Don't be afraid to strike out in new directions in order to leverage your social network connections, but don't forget that credibility invites followers.

 

This blog post was contributed by Harrison Kratz. Harrison is the Community Manager at MBA@UNC, the new distance learning MBA program offered through the University of North Carolina.  Students from around the world now have the opportunity to earn their Master's of Business Administration degree from a top ranked business school. Harrison also sticks to his entrepreneurial roots as the founder of the global social good campaign, TweetDrive.

 

Do You Know Your Best Question?

On The Engaging Brand podcast I start by saying that the show is not about giving you answers to your problems but giving you ideas about what are the right questions you should be asking yourself, your colleagues, your customers....

One career tip Dad gave me was this

"Start each week with 3 great questions you want to find the answers for, ask your team what questions they want to answer and how you can help them...then complete the circle by asking yourself and the team at the end of the week....did you find a way of answering the questions? If not...why?"

So use the time to work to think about those questions or if you work from home then use the shower to be your idea centre!

Let me know what question you have challenged yourself with answering.....

Being a Better Person

Being a better person, being a better parent, friend, colleague, boss....will always depend on us trying to achieve that minute by minute, word by word, action by action.

This remembrance weekend I thought thinking about a quote from Abraham Lincoln could help us all achieve a better more compassionate world

"When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two thirds about him and what he is going to say"

I know I can be guilty of hearing what someone is saying without devoting my time to understanding what they are saying and why...maybe we should have this quote on our desks...lest we forget as the saying goes!

Show 359 - What is Gamification

Show 359 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen for free, you don't need to download anything and all explained at the end of the post. 

Gabe Zichermann joins Anna Farmery to talk about the great principles from his new business book Gamification By Design. Gabe is a true expert in this area, an area which is relevant to ALL businesses. I would strongly suggest you check and subscribe to his blog Gamification.

We discuss

• Gamification - what is it and what are the prinicples?
• Is gamification purely virtual world or are they in real world marketing as well?
• How does gamification relate to non standard items such as shaving creams? 
• What are the mechnics of gamification?
• Is the difference between reward programs and gamification a social el
  ement?
• Has it moved from monetary and individual to recognition and social.
• The importance os S.A.P.S - status, access, power and stuff.
• Does it have to have a relational, 'competitive' aspect to the gamification marketing strategy?
• Can games be designed without competition? And how Nike+ is about competing with yourself.
• Does there need to be a start, middle and end in gamification in marketing.
• By earning recognition you move a customer from a price chaser, to a loyal customer.
• How gamification is a great tool for social media
• What do case studies show about the profit uplift for gamification vs non game element?

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter. Or leave a message at The Engaging Brand Fan Page or join me on Google+ for a huddle!

How you can listen to The Engaging Brand

1) You can listen on your PC now without downloading any software just click hear to listen to the latest marketing podcast

2) You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or

3) If you use a different podcatcher then you can subscribe using the following RSS Feed

Why Similarity Does Not Breed Marketing Contempt

In the digital age it is easy to be worried about standing out from the crowd. Reality shows have encourage a desire to shock in order to be noticed. Blog posts which have disparaging headlines can grab quick traffic...

Therefore it is easy to think that shocking is the way to get consumers engaged.

However, I was listening to an interview with the author Lee Childs, famous for his depiction of Jack Reacher, he commented (my paraphrasing as didn't write it down exactly!)

"Diversity is available through the myriad of books available. In a world of choice people want comfort, crave a similarity of writing which they can belong to.."

This is true for marketing.

No matter what, when or how you communicate it must have that reassuring appeal. Reassuring in the sense that it sounds like YOU, reassuring that it expresses consistency of values over time, reassuring because it continues to interest or even excite the consumer.

Shocking is good when it is evolution not expected - Ipad

Similarity is great when Steve Jobs - oh how we will miss his delivery - says "Oh and one more thing...."

Similarity does not mean similarity of content!

It means similarity of tone, of values, of expectations.