The Case for Podcasts – Doubling the odds that your marketing message will be remembered

As many of you know, I have long been a fan of podcasts as an effective marketing tool. My reasoning was, and continues to be, twofold:  First, anecdotal evidence demonstrates that a significant portion of your audience prefers to consume content by listening to it as opposed to reading it.  Second, many C-level decision-makers no longer read and review product and service options while in the office, where their time is at a premium, but rather while driving or working out.  In these latter settings, audio content trumps all other types of content for obvious reasons.
As our rationale was mostly based on anecdotal evidence, I am always on the lookout for science-based empirical evidence to buttress my thinking.  I recently came across a study from sparkinsight.com (see graphic below) that proves our podcast thesis – after two weeks, we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, and 50% of what we see and hear.

So, you ask, what is the best way to leverage the power of the spoken word?

Here are two suggestions:
1.  When promoting a new product or service, consider creating two short (15 minutes) podcasts: one with an internal expert and the second with a satisfied customer or partner.  The first positions your company as an expert or thought leader, while the second represents the third-party social proof for that positioning.  We call it the “1-2  integrated marketing punch”.
2.  If your company lists its management or partners with pictures and bios on its Web site, create a very short (5 minutes) podcast with each of them.
Remember: by simply adding a podcast to your marketing mix, you are doubling the chances that your audience will remember your message.

More Formats: Better Learning (2)
The second concept related to neuroscience is the idea of assisting people to interact with your content in multiple ways. The concept of “multimodal learning” explains that people are more likely to learn and retain information when it is presented in multiple modalities, such as written (visual) and aural (auditory) at the same time. Your content will get more attention if you offer people multiple formats by which they can consume it.

What’s up Tweety Bird?

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.  That’s all I seem to be hearing these days.  Granted, when your user base is growing at the pace of 300,000 accounts everyday (over 105 million users to date), you are bound to garner some attention. Just to put it in context, 4 billion tweets were posted on Twitter  in the first quarter of 2010.  That’s a lot of conversations.

I must admit that I was not an immediate Twitter convert.  For some reason, I really did not feel the need to know, in 140 characters bursts, what someone had for breakfast or dinner.  Fortunately, I regularly speak to people who are much wiser then me, and as a result have become a convert.

Due to the inordinate number of questions I get from clients about Twitter and its application to business, I am going to do two things.  First, I’m hosting a Webcast in the next few weeks to answer your questions. Second, my next few posts will highlight some powerful Twitter apps and their business utility.  The first one is TweetBeep (http://tweetbeep.com/).  It is very similar to Google Alerts but instead of searching the Web, it focuses on the Twitterverse.  Once you register (free) you are asked to create a set of key words or phrases.  Anytime these appear in a publicly available Twitter conversation (most are), you will receive an email alert.

How is this useful, you might ask?  It can give you a head’s up on tweets mentioning your products, services, customer service or other facets of your business.  When the chatter is positive, you may have yourself some champions.  When, on the other hand, the tweets are negative, it enables you to very quickly address whatever the issues may be. Finding out about negative comments right away, as opposed to waiting until they wind their way through the Web, can save time, money and brand equity (what old fashioned marketers call reputation).  Try it out and let me know what you think by posting a comment.

LinkedIn- You’ve come a long way baby!

Founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman, and launched in 2003, LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) has become the dominant Web-based professional networking platform.  I’ve been using it and have encouraged clients to do so for some time now.  As good as LinkedIn is, it did stumble somewhat by not embracing social media tools and networks fast enough.

This all changed over the last year or so with the integration of a number of social media capabilities into the LinkedIn platform.  In my view, these are the most important ones:

1.  Twitter (www.twitter.com) – you can now have your Twitter feed automatically appear in your LinkedIn profile as soon as you’ve tweeted

2. Blogging – your blog posts now also get uploaded onto your profile right after they are posted on your blog (this feature is available for a number of blogging platforms, including WordPress and TypePad)

3. Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) – any voice-enabled PowerPoint presentations you’ve uploaded to to SildeShare now appear in your profile as well

These changes are important for a number of reasons.  First, they expose more of your brand and content to your LinkedIn professional network.  These contacts can now see your tweets and blog posts without having to go elsewhere.  Second, they save you a ton of time in that you no longer have to update your LinkedIn profile with content you’ve created elsewhere. Last, by making sure it embraces social media, LinkedIn is taking steps to stay relevant and, in the process, protect the myriad of hours its members have spent in building their profiles and extending their networks.

If a blog falls in the forest does anybody hear?

With March break upon many of us, my mind is onto more metaphysical questions – thus the subject line.  What I am referring to here are metrics and measurement, a subject whose importance cannot be overemphasized.  One of my favourite business mentors taught me that “what you do not measure cannot be improved”.  It is a lesson that we constantly convey to our clients, as well as applying it internally.  When you consider that improving conversions from 2% to 3%, for example, can mean a 50% jump in revenue, you start to take it seriously. 

In the Web 1.0 world, there are numerous software measurement and metric packages that vary in sophistication and price.  The one you choose depends on your type of business and the metrics you look for.  In our business, and for clients, we use Google Analytics, as well as a serverbased package that acts as a check and balance, so to speak.  In my book, when considering data richness, ease of use, and price (free!), Google Analytics is unrivalled.

In the social media world, measurement and metric software is a fairly nascent space but it is developing rather quickly.  One option I have been testing and will deploy in a number of upcoming social media campaigns is Ubervu, which measures “conversation”, “reactions”, and a variety of other metrics in the social media universe.  Go to www.ubervu.com, input your company name in the “Search for Social Media Conversations” window, and click “Analyze”.

 At the end of the day, it’s the not the software you pick but the fact that you do it consistently and continuously adjust.  Remember: “you cannot improve that which you do not measure”.

This app is better than ice cream

Most of the apps on my iPhone were downloaded by my kids, so I don’t often use them (unless a meeting is really unproductive …).  There are, however, more and more business apps being released that have real value to corporate marketing efforts.  One of our clients’ greatest challenges is continuously producing fresh content for their Web site, intranets, blogs and other social media efforts.  Although more of them are starting to take advantage of the corporate blogging services we (and others) offer, the search for fresh content is constantly on.  

In the social media space, video has become an effective, engaging, and low cost form of content (read my blog on video blogging here).  One app that makes the creation and deployment of video content easy is iVideo. If you have a 3GS iPhone, you have video built in.  If you have a 3G iPhone, the iVideo app will turn it into video camera. The truly cool and powerful function in iVideo (whichever phone you use) is its ability to share video content with numerous social networking sites at the click of a button. Any video you shoot, be it at a trade show or product demo, can be immediately uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. All you need to do is click the share button, pick the social network of your choice, and in a matter of minutes your content is before a global audience.

The grand cost of iVideo Camera in the iPhone app store –  I picked it up for $0.99 (it’s not a typo). You can read more about it here:  http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/ivideocamera-record-video/id332166209?mt=8

 

 

Your Worst Customer is Your Best Friend

Huh? How can that be? Well, according to the book What Would Google Do?, in a “google universe” most information is both public and transparent. That means you can save a lot of anxious moments down the road (not to mention revenues) by knowing your worst customers and finding out what they have to say. Imagine a world where customers could not pan your products or services with a few clicks of the mouse. A world where bad product and service reviews could not be easily tracked or discovered. In that world, negative news would spread slowly and stealthily by word of mouth and, by the time you found out about it, it could be too late (and infinitely more expensive) to fix.

What’s the lesson here? Leverage the Web and social media tools to get as much feedback from your customers as possible. Give your worst customers the opportunity to speak up quickly and easily so you can fix their grievances in the same fashion. Here is author Jeff Jarvis’s description of a restaurant run according to Googlethink. Once you read it, ask yourself how it applies to your business. What can you do to find your worst customers/best friends?

“What would a restaurant run according to Googlethink look like—other than being decorated in garish primary colors with a neon sign, big balls for seats, and Fruit Loops and M&Ms on every table?

Imagine instead a restaurant—any restaurant—run on openness and data. Say we pick up the menu and see exactly how many people had ordered each dish. Would that influence our choice? It would help us discover the restaurant’s true specialties (the reason people come here must be the crab cakes) and perhaps make new discoveries (the 400 people who ordered the Hawaiian pizza last month can’t all be wrong??? Can they?).

If a restaurateur were true to Googlethink, she would hunger for more data. Why not survey diners at the end of the meal? That sounds frightening—what if they hate the calamari?—but there’s little to fear. If the squid is bad and the chef can hear her customers say so, she’ll 86 it off the menu and make something better. Everybody wins. She’ll also impress customers with her eagerness to hear their opinions. This beats wandering around the tables, randomly asking how things are (as a diner, I find it awkward and ungracious to complain; it’s like carping about Grandmother’s cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving). Why not just ask the question and give everyone the means to answer? Your worst diner could be your best friend.”

Did Social Media Determine Fate of US Healthcare Reform?

By all appearances that is exactly what happened.  Scott Brown’s upset, come from behind, win in the Massachusetts Senate race now represents the 41st vote in the Senate, breaking the Democrats filibuster-proof majority in Washington.  In another word passage of President Obama’s healthcare reform legislation is now very much in doubt.

When you dig a little (which we did) you’ll find not only that a Canadian orchestrate the victory but he utilized social media tools to pull off what some referred to as one of the biggest political upset in recent memory.   Whether you support or oppose healthcare reform in the US, the lesson is that social media marketing, properly leveraged, can significantly affect the outcome of a political race or, for that matter, the success of you company

For a good article on this check today’s National Post here or go to – http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2493174

What Would Google Do? Trust vs. Control

In WWGD, Jeff Jarvis addresses a number of principles (he refers to them as laws) that have enabled Google to become so dominant so fast.  His first law is: “Give the people control and we will use it; don’t and you will lose us”. He speaks of it primarily in the context of the media business – where the fence between journalists, editors and the readers/consumers was tall and inviolable until the advent of the Internet and the rise of the Blog (not the “Borg”).

If you think about it, it also applies to many other industries.  Henry Ford’s old adage that “people can have a car in any colour they want as long as it’s black”, which held sway for decades, is no longer.  Companies that give their customers choice (read control) engender their audience’s trust and this translates into increased revenues and profits (see Google and Craigslist).

How can you apply this to your business? Engage your customers in the areas that are most important to them: product development and customer service.  For powerful examples, see – My Starbucks Idea and  Dell Idea Storm.  My favorite Starbucks idea: coffee ice cubes – brilliant!

Please share your experiences and post any questions you may about how to apply this to your business.

Side note:  Jeff Jarvis first came to prominence due a critical blog post of an experience he had with Dell and which ultimately led Dell to pay attention to blogs and to begin engaging their customers.  Check one of the posts here – http://www.buzzmachine.com/2005/08/17/dear-mr-dell/