Updates from February, 2012

• Introducing the Word WOMM-U Edition
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:53 am on February 29, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: WOMM-U (30)

  WOMM-U is just 68 days away. From now until the halls open, we’ll be devoting the Wednesday Word to WOMM-U’s keynotes, faculty and topics.

  Today’s Focus: Becoming WOMM-U Faculty

  Teaching at WOMM-U gets you in front of 300+ high-level marketers from brands, agencies, and service providers. It not only benefits the WOMM community, but also elevates your work, company and name.

  Here are a few tips for your case study submission:

  1. Think of it as storytelling – Your work had a beginning, middle, and end, but you probably thought of it as a problem, solution, and results. Make it as engaging as you expect your presentation to be.

  2. Show us the money – We want results, hard and tangible results. Your measurement is a major part of the story.

  3. Have it proofread – Don’t just hire a freelancer. Show it to at least three people. They will not only find spelling and grammatical errors, but also where your writing is unclear or confusing.

  4. Keep it tight – Nothing in your case study should be long-winded. Brevity prevails.

  5. Give us your best – Sitting on a pile of case studies? Submit the best one or two. Our standards are high. If the submitted case studies fall short, we’ll find better ones elsewhere.

  Questions? Call us! We love to chat and help.

  Submission Deadline: March 9

  Submit Here

  

  

   

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• Case Study: Keeping Brand Advocates Buzzed
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:51 am on February 29, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Brand Advocates (8), Case Study (16), Facebook (27)

  

  There’s a big difference between buying or liking a brand and being an advocate for them. To push consumers from passive enjoyment to active promotion, brands need to do a lot of things right.

  Coffee-mate is a good example. Their website and Facebook page both operate to increase advocacy. Here’s how:

  1. They tease new flavors with clues before the product is released. This generates a high volume of conversation and sharing.

  2. They respond to nearly every Facebook post. With nearly 625,000 fans, this is no small task. It’s well worth it. Customers know that they can get answers quickly - something worth telling others about.

  3. Their website is a smooth user experience. Their eNewsletter is easy to sign-up for and very informational. The site itself is full of recipes, an idea exchange, quizzes, blogs…you get the idea. It’s a place where fans can get more stuff to try and talk about.

  Key Takeaway: Creating advocates takes more than great deals and good products. Think of it like a restaurant. The best ones not only have great food but also make you want to stay a while, chat, and come back.

  Read more about how Coffee-mate nurtures their advocates at Amplifinity

  

  

   

• Keynote Interview: Kristina Halvorson, CEO, Brain Traffic
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:45 am on February 29, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Content Marketing (62), WOM How-to (591), WOMM-U (30)

  

  Kristina has spent her career bridging the gap between content, UX, and strategy. Her new book, Content Strategy for the Web, focuses on how brands can develop content that not only engages, but boosts the bottom line.

  She recently gave an interview to Web Designer Depot. Below is an excerpt:

  WDD: A few weeks ago you observed (and tweeted),

  “Google search results of ‘content strategy’ increased 156% in 2011 over 2010. Results for ‘content marketing’ increased 875%. Discuss.”

  What do you make about these increases and the differentiation between these two terms? Why in your opinion is content marketing gaining over content strategy?

  Halvorson: Content Marketing is a term made popular by Joe Pulizzi and Ann Handley, and my ongoing concern about content is that you can’t create it without strategy. Content marketing is a tactic and when content is not considered strategically, for example. who it’s for, is it being delivered to the right people, how are we positioning it— we need to have a conversation about what do we need to do to accomplish not just the substance, but the front-end, back-end, workflow, governance, policies and guidelines of content.

  
  

  With regard to getting content right—any organization where you have a good browsing experience, what you see in the search results, social media, and you’re able to understand who the organization is, and are able to see that they’re up-to-date and relevant.

  
  

  Landing pages often get a lot of attention but sometimes everything else behind it is in need of work. I compare it to a house that is falling down—you can add lots of coats of paint but eventually you need to deal with the structural needs.

  
  

  Read the full interview at Web Designer Depot

  

  

   

• Pinterest vs. Fancy
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:29 am on February 27, 2012 | 5 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Content Marketing (62), Startups (2), WOM Trends (738)

  

  

  Good ideas often don’t stand alone. As Pinterest has blown up, a smaller pinning site has been laying some profitable groundwork.

  Fancy is a pinning site that announced on Thursday that it will now conduct eCommerce transactions directly. This is, perhaps, the one thing Pinterest is missing.

  Web content has become highly visual in the last few years. Pinterest and Fancy are tailored for this environment. But when it comes to the bottom line, eCommerce is probably the only way to turn pictures into profit.

  The Big Question

  To all the startup wonks out there – Is Fancy putting the cart before the horse? What’s to keep Pinterest from launching a similar function to their larger and faster growing user base?

  Read more about Fancy at Mashable

  

  

   

• Wikipedia’s Credibility
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:28 am on February 27, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Research (521), Wikipedia

  

  Wikipedia has long been a brand’s second website. Its easy-to-follow information flow makes it ideal for anyone in search of quick facts. This has made it critical for PR folks eager to maintain accurate brand image. But just how credible is Wikipedia?

  The Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement are trying to find out. Their study looks at Wikipedia from an angle unlike many others – how it is perceived by Public Relations Professionals. It aims to draw opinions on:

  1. How the public perceives Wikipedia’s credibility
  2. Whether the public goes to Wikipedia before a branded website for information
  3. If it’s common and/or acceptable to edit a Wikipedia page anonymously for a client

  The survey takes 3-5 minutes. If you have a moment today, please help out.

  Take the Survey

  

  

   

• And the Oscar goes to…
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:25 am on February 27, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Research (521), Twiiter (40), WOM in Entertainment (42)

  Yesterday, the Oscars anointed a new class of timeless performances. Radian6 had crunched the numbers before the envelopes opened and found the social conversation to be fairly predictive of the final results.

  The data were gathered between Jan. 24 and Feb. 20, encompassing 332,422 social media conversations.

  Best Picture

  The Artist won the award, but didn’t win the conversation. The Help beat it out, 29,036 vs. 26,662 conversations.

  Actor in a Leading Role

  Jean Du Jardin narrowly beat Brad Pitt, 34,049 vs. 33,573 conversations. Du Jardin’s conversation was 94.7% positive as well, perhaps why he won.

  

  Actress in a Leading Role

  For The Iron Lady, Meryl Streep brought in her eighth Oscar and 32,963 social conversations.

  

  Read more about the Oscar social conversation at Radian6

  

  

   

• The Oscars Predicted by Twitter and Facebook
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:10 am on February 24, 2012 | 2 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Infographic (22), Research (521), Twiiter (40), WOM in Entertainment (42)

  Many regard social media to be the pulse of our society. Rightly, a slew of event outcomes can be predicted based on the chatter. However, one event cannot be predicted: The Oscars.

  The difference between The Oscars and, say, American Idol is that the former is controlled by a singular body of over 6,000 movie professionals and the latter is totally public. Even though a large percentage of the population doesn’t use Twitter, the conversation in it still shows general trends. So public contests can be predicted much better than private ones.

  This theory has been right in the past, but who knows, maybe this year will be different.

  Banyan Branch crunched the numbers and found the social conversation predicting…

  

  

  

  See the full infographic at AllTwitter

  

  

   

• Privacy, Privacy, Pinterest
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:05 am on February 24, 2012 | 1 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Pinterest (9), Privacy (8), WOM and Social Networks (702), WOM Ethics (138)

  

  We’ve covered the Pinterest explosion for the past few weeks and have found little to hold against the quickly-growing social network. The streak has ended.

  Pinterest recently got knocked for switching user links to affiliate links in an attempt to generate revenue - hardly a cardinal sin. The uproar started because Pinterest never told their users about it.  Privacy, once again, throws water on the fire.

  Facebook and Google are no strangers to getting knocked for lax privacy policies. But when you look at their business models, even Pinterest’s, the dollar is in the data. Facebook and Google sell advertising. Pinterest almost inevitably will soon do the same. But users tend to have a knee-jerk reaction whenever a social network steps over the line.

  Key Takeaway: You may not run a social network, but almost every company collects customer/user data to some extent. Always be clear about how you use it and who sees it.

  Read more about Pinterest and Privacy at Edelman Digital

  

  

   

• Kickstarter on Track to Out-fund NEA
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:04 am on February 24, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Cause Marketing (5), Creative WOM Ideas (256), Croudfunding, Kickstarter, WOM in Politics (94)

  

  Croudfunding on Kickstarter is on pace to hit $150 million dollars in 2012, $4 million more than the budget for The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). Kickstarter’s project guidelines state:

  “Kickstarter can be used to fund projects from the creative fields of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. We currently only support projects from these categories.”

  The Opportunity for Word of Mouth

  Research shows that people, particularly Millennials, like brands that support cause conscious and collaborative projects. And anyone can donate to Kickstarter. This could be an excellent way to causally and publicly support projects. Even small businesses can get in on it with small donations.

  Read more about Kickstarter’s milestone at Talking Points Memo

  

  

   

• Creating Content that Sells
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:21 am on February 22, 2012 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Content Creation (13), Content Marketing (62), WOM B2B (51), WOM How-to (591)

  Two slidedecks today on content marketing, a big focus for WOMMA in 2012. Both focus on creating the right content at the right part of the sales process, whether it’s for B2B or B2C.

  The Suspects and Prospects B2B Content

  The first comes from Eloqua, with design by JESS3. They found that at the wide, ever-reaching end of the sales funnel, you have Suspects. These people are best reached through broad and free content like blogs, social networks and partner sites. Done correctly, Suspects become Prospects.

  Prospects are further down the sales funnel. They’ve given some personal information in exchange for more content. This means they think you have what they need. Prove it to them with more focused content like eBooks, webinars, and chapters from physical books.

  

  ———————–

  Step 4 is “Create Shareable Content”

  Steven van Belleghem of InSites Consulting created the Six-Step Content Marketing Model. The steps are:

  1. Topic selection
  2. Content conversion strategy
  3. Editorial content planning
  4. Create shareable content
  5. Manage content conversation
  6. Measure success

  Content creation often catches people by surprise. It’s a longer process than expected. Following a calendar, keeping subjects focused, and engaging those who consume the content will make the actual content convert more.