Back in the old country (not geographically–two decades ago in the 90′s), there was one brand of mobile phone, there were two brands of jeans, vaccines were definitely good for you, and you could do advertising or you could do marketing. Life was simple.

If you were going to do some advertising for you business, you’d consider magazines, tv, newspapers, or the yellow pages. On the outside chance you were big enough, you’d sprinkle in there some billboard ads.

If you were going to do some marketing, you hire a PR person to get you writeups in those same magazines and papers you are considering advertising in. You’d go to some entrepreneurs’ round table, you’d go to trade shows, and you’d mingle. This was marketing.

Today, prospective clients ask my team for marketing help. And frankly, I’m not really sure what that means.

If you ask us for marketing help and then tell us that you want to market via Twitter and Facebook, which are social environments but then tell us that you have nobody on staff who can write and be a full time web customer service rep, that’s like saying, I want to go to a big industry trade show for networking and I have nobody to send (yes, can can hire out but it’s much more cost effective to do it inhouse).

So here are the pros and cons; strengths and weaknesses of each medium of communication and each of their requirements for successful implementation. Special thanks to Orange County’s Top Solar Panel Installer for inspiring this post!

The Pros and Cons: Google SEO vs Google Adsense vs Twitter vs Facebook vs Blogging vs Forums vs Banner Ads

Google Adsense
Pros: Instant Traffic, Precise Measurement

Cons: $1-$5 per click, conservatively 800 clicks per sale (Do the math)

Requirements: Just sign up with a credit card

Google Organic Search
Pros: High credibility and conversion rates (lower every year due to SEO spammers);  generally 1200% higher conversion rates than Adwords Sponsored Results; long term residual traffic

Cons: None, if you’re already a leading reference site for your niche. If not, Cons: significant labor and strategy required to secure page one position; if done incorrectly, you could end up being sand-boxed or blacklisted

Requirements: A good honest writer; Finding and paying for a very experienced Google Strategy Team (avoid SEO people. many tend to be Sleezy. See SEO is a SCAM); picking keyword terms that people will actually click (trickier than you imagine See #2: Nine Dark Google SEO Trade Secrets)

Twitter
Pros: Immediate direct access to millions of users internationally; Bio search to precisely target location and demographic; Direct two way communication; Unlimited messaging; Strong mobile penetration; Direct penetration to SMS text for many users; Real Time Search: Eaves dropping on live conversations by key word (How useful would it be to know what people are saying about you, your competitor, your products, theirs, etc in real time?); High impression to CRT ratio

Cons: Direct two way communications; People can arbitrarily report you as spam; You can only message a practical maximum of 5 people per message; ZERO Google Page Rank Value (links don’t help your Google rank–practically SEE LINK); Easy to acquire hundreds of demographically precise followers daily (labor intensive)

Requirements: Highly senior customer service person; Skilled terse writer; 10 minute response time; Availability 12 hours a day for non international companies; Consulting from an experienced Twitter culture consultant or every book ever written about Twitter; A Tweet lasts about 60 minutes before it disappears downstream; Impression rate is very low at about 4% of total follower base. More: http://journik.posterous.com/tag/twitter

Facebook (Organic)
Pros: Impression rate is high at about 70% of friend base; Instant response is generally less necessary than Twitter; Low maintenance;

Cons: High resistance to acquiring new friends and “Likes”; More challenging than Twitter to precisely target by demographics

Requirements: None if you’re happy with low volume reach. If not, you’ll need an experienced marketing team to build your Facebook friend count (See: Facebook Marketing Trade Secrets)

Facebook (Ads)
Pros: Near instant release and traffic; Absolutely the most precise demographic targeting system on the web; Pay per click; Generally less expensive than Google Adwords

Cons: Low click through rates compared to Google Adwords and much lower than Organic Google. Generally even lower CTR than Twitter; Second most costly PPC medium next to Google Adwords

Requirements: Experienced marketeer to pinpoint target demographics or web savvy business owner; Understanding of value of a “Like” vs direct click through to destination site; credit card

Advertising on Discussion Forums and Blogs

Banner Ads PPC (Pay Per Click)
Pros: You can precisely target which readership you want by making a direct deal with a blog or forum owner; Relatively inexpensive per impression; You can create deep branding impact and messaging inexpensively if you pay per click and design the banners to prevent click throughs (Why you would do it is the subject of another post)

Cons: Low conversion rate; Moderate cost

Requirements: A very senior and experienced direct response copy writer; very experienced designer; blog and forum stats/media kit; Relationship with Blog and Forum Owner

Banner Ads PPI (Pay Per Impression)
Pros: If you design a banner with a touchdown call to action, you can double or triple your click thrus while paying a flat rate per impression. Each click through is calculated to cost you about a dollar and occur at about every 700 impressions. So if you design your ad correctly, you can get a click every 200 impressions and still be paying the same amount. This math also applies to Facebook Ads.

Cons: No matter how high your CRT (Click Through Rate) is, your conversion to sale will be low. After all, this is still just a cold ad with no rapport of credibility.

Requirements:
A very senior and experienced direct response copy writer; very experienced designer; blog and forum stats/media kit; Relationship with Blog and Forum Owner

Youtube Marketing
Youtube always get preferential Google positioning. This is because Google owns Youtube. This is also because Google wants to start selling Google TVs. So if you have a Youtube video with exactly the same content as a blog post, your Youtube video will be on Broadway while your blog post is off-off-off-Broadway.

But Youtube and is a huge topic. So we’ve focused and expanded on it exclusively here: Youtube Forcast and Trend Watch: How to Double Your Sales With Youtube

Build Your Own Blog and Discussion Forum Empire

Building Your Own Discussion Forum
Pros: You don’t have to pay a forum owner to advertise on his website; You have full control over conversational direction; You wield adminstrator / moderator influence

Cons: You’ve got to build the forum

Requirements: Forum builder; Forum moderator; Forum admin; Marketing to drive traffic to forum

Building Your Own Blog
Pros: You don’t have to pay any other bloggers to advertise on their blog; You have full control of content (See http://journik.posterous.com/tag/blogging )

Cons: You’ve got to blog twice daily;

Requirements: A+ Level Blogger; Designer

So now that you’re totally confused, let’s take you back to the old country. Back then, there was advertising, marketing and sales. That was it and everyone knew what was what. Now, not so much.

So to give you an industry veteran perspective of all your choices today, just think of Advertising as a shotgun blast. If you shoot often enough, you’ll hit somebody when they’re in the market to buy. But advertising doesn’t do a good job of building rapport and credibility. There’s no good-will associated with advertising.

People buy on rapport (relationship depth) and credibility (demonstrated expertise). That’s why people buy from friends and celebrities.

So here’s where marketing comes in. Marketing is designed to bring you to your market in an intimate way. Marketing builds relationships. Your marketing is what generates referral business. I don’t know the last time anybody email forwarded a buddy an ad. Finally, Marketing is what gets that phone to ring on your salesman’s desk.

So by this historic definition, Google Search Engine Marketing isn’t marketing at all. It’s just advertising. All it does is make you available should a prospect be looking for what you sell. Marketing develops relationships. And this difference is critical when you’re goal is to develop the least expensive immediate lowest hanging fruit sales and create long term relationships that deliver long term recurring business. One pays your bills. The other builds your empire.

InfoGraphic To Clarify All This Coming Up… To be alerted when our infographic is up and ready, just subscribe to our RSS feed http://journik.posterous.com/rss and follow us at http://twitter.com/journik

Now, the issue becomes which medium of outreach is the best fit for you? To discuss marketing with the author of this post, “Google SEO vs Google Adwords vs Twitter vs Facebook vs Blogging…” see http://sparkah.com/marketing.php

Also: Why A Powerful Marketing Strategy Incorporates Them All To Some Extent: The Tao of Making Tough Decisions (Business Philosophy)

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

four

About three years ago, before Oprah had even heard of “Twitter,” Twitter was making new millionaires. No, not just @Ev and @Biz. Twitter made the most sought after CEOs and VCs in Silicon Valley directly accessible. It was as if there was a new tech security breach in their multiple secretary and executive assistant firewall. All you had to do is send @fredwilson a Tweet and he would meet with you.

Youtube did the same for hundreds of starving film school students. Youtube needed content so they pushed their early adopters using Google’s checkbook. Overnight, singers got MTV deals and record label deals. Overnight, producers on iBooks got pilots on major networks.

When ever a new disruptive technology ramps up, early adopters get unique positioning. All they have to do is sit there and the platform’s growth becomes their growth. It’s just like surfing one of those waimea swells during a storm.

Timing is Everything. But Location, Location, Location is Everywhere
It’s the virtual equivalent of what happened to an Armenian friend of mine. His father built a gas station on a parcel of rural land in the middle of nowhere. A year later, fortune 500 corporations moved in all around him. You’ve probably filled up your tank at his station. It’s the one in the middle of Cupertino. And he also owns the one across the street. He doesn’t even own an iPod.

Imagine how your business and marketing strategy would change if you could forecast what a billion people like Gus were going to do tomorrow.

Now, Foursquare is that new disruptive vehicle. But personally, I think the more interesting story is not how Foursquare will empower your business. I think what’s more interesting is how Foursquare will empower Foursquare.

Just today, Foursquare was reported to be in talks about selling their data to Bing, Yahoo or Google. If you don’t know why this is a big deal, read on gentle reader, read on.

I used to have an office in Cardiff by the Sea, CA. It was on the strand just between the San Elijo Lagoon and the Pacific Ocean. Blue water was everywhere. And so was old Gus. Gus hobbled up and down the most beautiful stretch of San Diego coast line with a shopping cart filled with soda cans he’d dug out of public trash cans. Nobody ever figured out what he did with the cans since he obviously couldn’t drive to a recycling facility. What’s more, nobody ever figured out how he got to this stretch of beach from whatever bridge he slept under.

You Don’t Even Have to Use Foursquare to Be Profiled
At this point, you might be thinking that if Gus used Foursquare, we’d know everything about him. But that’s financially useless information. What gives Foursquare and you extraordinary business leverage is the implied data about Gus.

Toward the end of Gus’s life, we noticed he was missing from his usual beat every now and again. He was the topic of conversation at the Chart House where staff and guests all grew to take comfort in his cameos.

The staff and guests all used Foursquare. It was Dodge Ball at the time. But that’s not even the exciting part.

Even if You Omit a Check In, Your Location Pattern Implies Your Hidden Rendevous
If Gus was alive today, his entire demographic profile would be transparent using the data Foursquare wants to sell Google or Bing. It would be obvious that he visited Dr. Malone off of Santa Fe Ave. He’s the top cancer specialist in the area. It would be obvious that Gus went to the county court house after seeing a notary public.

Then if you run a DB query to find all users who had the same “check-in” pattern, you’d find that many of the users also met with Steven R. Jennings Esq, the most expensive estate planning attorney in San Diego.

Even if Gus never used Foursquare, his fans driving around town checking-in saying they “spotted” @Gus would be enough for whoever has access to the Foursquare data to realize that Gus was an eccentric multi-millionaire looking for someone to give his money to. Turned out, he gave it the to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Multiple Millions changed hands because one of them drove him to the dump on a weekly basis.

Imagine how your business and marketing strategy would change if you could forecast what a billion people like Gus were going to do tomorrow.

Follow me @journik. My next post will demonstrate how your “location patterns” reveal your age, sexual orientation, income, and even health prognosis into old age.

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

After almost half a decade of Twitter and Facebook being around, nobody seems to clearly understand the pros and cons of either for use in marketing. In fact, I started Googling for a competitive matrix that compared all the key web marketing factors applied between Facebook and Twitter. I Fail.

So I just built one myself. Below is a table that compares these two social media marketing powerhouses across 15 key web marketing criteria. The terms used are industry terms so if you’re not sure what each one means, I’ve also included a video discussion of this matrix below.

In any case, while you can measure a googleplex worth of criteria, in the end, effective marketing simply comes down to how many hours did you have to spend to create a dollar? Will Twitter make me that same dollar faster than Facebook?

	Twitter	Facebook
Visibility	1 hour	12 hours
SEO	no. nofollow	no. nofollow and hidden links
CTR within 3 min	0.2% (1000 followers = 2 clicks)	0.05%
CTR within 1 hour	0.3%	1.2%
CTR within 12 hours	0.35%	5.3%
Conversion Rate	nil, null, ziltch	0.05% (2000 friends = 1 purchase)
Comment Visibility	only your followers	everyone in comment stream
Follower aquisition	almost impossible	easy but limited
Follower acquisition limits	1000 follows / day	20 / few hours
Loyalty	low	high
Spam Noise	medium	low
Privacy	none	medium
Mobility	high	medium-high
Learning curve	high	low
Content Richness	text only	text, thumbnail, video

So how do Twitter clicks look compared Facebook clicks over time? With Twitter, You’re going to see a jump in the beginning and a rapid tapering off. After about an hour, your Tweet gets buried. Facebook however doesn’t really have a CTR spurt. It stays constant over about a 12 hour period before your Facebook status post gets buried.

TWITTER:

FACEBOOK:

Now that you’re equipped with data that helps you project your marketing and advertising ROI, you’ll find that creating the above conversion rates and CTRs are not as easy as it seems. Especially since Facebook has a 5,000 friend limit, you’ll have to start using Facebook pages.

Then you’ll run into another can of worms. So if you’d like professional and experienced help marketing your company, call me at 310 598 1606 or just bring any questions you may have to http://www.facebook.com/bob.wan.kim

Look forward to meeting you.

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

I just found Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop on the same topic. But since the link he posted for a free ebook download seems like a email harvesting scam, I’ll just share with you my Facebook marketing secrets.

80% of my traffic comes from Facebook friends. 10% comes from Twitter. The rest come from Google.

Based on the above stats, you can tell that marketing with facebook is effective. But the sound of the other shoe dropping is that i have 4,200 Facebook friends, 22,000 Twitter followers, and rank page one in google for the relevant search terms. So when you look at the CTR vs reach, Facebook comes across as the clear winner – by far.

My estimate is that each of my Facebook friends are worth about 55 Twitter followers. So the only advantage to Twitter is that you can reach people you can’t via Facebook.

Having said all this, lets get down to the mechanics of how to reach people via Facebook:

1. Use pages.
Personal Facebook accounts have a 5,000 person cap. Pages have no “liker” cap.
You can create an unlimited number of pages.

2. Select a “company” page.
Community pages can get “adopted” or ghestapo commandeered by Facebook.
Being a company page vs community page offers zero added resistance

3. Name your page carefully.
If you name your page, “Tim Bur’s Lumber,” nobody is going to “like” it.
If you name your page, “Hard Wood,” lots of people will like it. But how many of them are your target market?
If you name your page, “sustainable lumber,” target demographic people who happen-chance by may like “like.”
If you name your page, “I just staple gunned my thumb to the rafters,” the emotional imagery will earn you 2000%-5000% more “likes.” And the above target demographic will be included as a subset.
You cannot change a page name after you’ve created it so craft a name that is emotional and targets your demographic. Advertising your lumber on a page named “lesbians for fiberglass homes,” (yep, it exists) will just get your unliked – undoing all your hard work.

Seriously. Think about all the reach this person has. But if they talk about anything NOT sleep related, they’ll get “unliked” (unsubscribed) faster than a narcoleptic can fall asleep.

My estimate is that each of my Facebook friends are worth about 55 Twitter followers

4. When you make an admin post, make sure it’s not ad-like.
People hate being sold to. Educate about the merits of your product. Don’t sell. Educate.

5. Promote your page everywhere.
Get a Facebook Like Pluggin at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like
You’ll need to use another page for creating a like button for a Facebook Page. I will post that url as soon as I find it. Sorry.

Bonus: Offer prizes or give aways to anyone who “likes” your page
You’re basically giving away something cheap to build your opt-in page subscriber base

Why go to all this trouble?
If I click “Like” on one of your Facebook pages, every comment you make will show up in my Facebook account home wall. If I then click “like” on a recent post of yours, all my friends will see what you posted too. Viral at it’s best.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/journik for more ongoing tips. And if you have a corporation that sells nationwide or internationally, ask me about executing your corporate social media marketing via blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I guarantee it’ll be much more effective than any other advertising you’re doing now. Or call 310 598 1606 – Bob Wan Kim.

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

It’s an easter-egg hidden feature

In the good ole days before Twitter started locking down their API, you could use a program like Guy Hagen’s Twitseeker and it would automatically find people based on their tweet or bio content. Then, you could select up to 50 people at a time and follow them all. Following all these people would send out a Twitter generated “You have a new follower” email. But even better, Twitseeker would @message everyone automatically and say, @you followed @target using @twitseeker.

You’d get a 70% follow-back rate. That was astounding. Not any more.

Now, you have to be smarter. You can use a webapp like my http://untweeps.com … after you authenticate, you unfollow people based on the date since they last tweeted. Then, on the results page, you’ll see a tiny link asking if you want to follow new people. It’s an easter-egg hidden feature.

Or you can also use Google to isolate only twitter user pages based on their bio and location. While you can’t tell google to differentiate between their bio and the tweet content that appears on each twitter user’s page, since Google has a really cool “proximity relevance” feature, you can just include the words, “bio,” and “location,” to tell Google to focus on that section of any twitter user profile – Just like I did below.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at http://twitter.com/journik

PS. If you have a blog or busy site and want to trade ads, let’s do it – lemme know!

Posted via web from I’m just amazed.