PR ain't dead, traditional media ain't dead

Yes, this is one day out of many that I will actually take a break from all the social media and online marketing channels and remind you that Traditional media is still alive and well.

Sure, the total spent has dropped in recent years, couple that with the recent recession that hit traditional media hard and the trend looks like traditional media and PR are pretty much dead. But yet we still enjoy (once in a while) TV ads that feed our desire for a particular brand or product, PR pieces that boost our confidence in a brand, the car brochure that help you finalize your purchasing decision and you can understand why it still has value.

Let's look real quick at two examples:

1) Miracle on the Hudson (US Airway water landed on the cold Hudson river, all passengers and crew member made it to safety)

Looking at the timeline of events, social media clearly took the lead in reporting of the incident, including the first witness' photographs and forum talks, and video upload as the plane glide onto the water. Traditional media and company official statement comes almost 35-60 minutes later. However, it was those TV reports that put the story into context, and the company's official statement that communicate the picture inside the cockpit at the time of the incident, communications between the tower and the pilot, and company's position on the incident to public view. This is still the recognized authority when it comes to official communication to the general public.

2) H&R Block Death and Taxes

This is actually H&R's social media initiative. With Twitter, Facebook, YouTube penetration in the millions. However, they still spent millions more in their SuperBowl ad to attract many of their audiences to got them thinking about filing for tax early. With the economy in recession at the time, where almost everyone (include me) looking for maximum refund, this can be classified as a campaign success. (Even though I ended up using TurboTax online instead)

The two examples not only illustrate how alive traditional media and PR are, but it also illustrated an important point: PR and traditional media has evolved and the best use is to integrate with social media in order to gain maximum effects and optimized results. With that said, if you are planning to get help from PR and ad agencies, make sure you pick one that understands this fundamental shift in advertising and not one that got themselves stuck in the early 90s.

Businesses: stop talking and start listening

As I am compiling all my notes from Inbound Marketing Summit Boston in preparation for my company presentation at lunch, one point sticks out in my mind that I really want to talk to you about: Yes, content is King, but please for the love or your customers stop talking about yourself!

Online Marketing today has taken in a form of Inbound Marketing. Businesses shouldn't be talking about themselves, not about their history, not about how many people they have but rather where can they help, how they can help, and who they can help. To do so businesses need to start by listening.

Listening is perhaps the most time consuming aspect for many businesses, that is because they are so used to be the one talking. Listening in the Social Media world is not just sitting in front of your Twitter page, facebook page and wait for your friends or followers to comment, but it is a proactive exercise and go find the people who are talking about the business or the industry the business serve.

Since most of us are not Comcastcare (a Twitter account from Comcast customer service that spearheaded the corporate Twitter movement), where it is hard to find people actually talking about your business or product, we will have to look search for people online who are talking about your industry and perhaps your competitor, then engage them with knowledge and points that benefits them.

Word of caution here: don't start by selling your products or telling them how they should have used your service or products in the first place. It is about offering advice or knowledge to better educate your audience.

If you need a place to start, then why not start with Twitter? Setup an account, and start searching for people who are talking about your industry or the products you sell. Follow them, reply them with suggestions, then setup a simple blog that answer questions in detail if 140 characters is not enough, then point them to your blog. The goal is to let people know you care and also have the capability to care. Then in your blog create links to your website and let your audience do the clicking.

Once you get a handle on basic Twitter operations and searching, check out this list of Twitter applications and tools and enjoy!

Keywords rotation strategy - how often and how much should you do it?

You have a lot of things to say about your brand online, and it is likely that you have more keywords you want optimized than what the search engines cares to look for. Most SEO experts can tell you search engines weight the importance of your keywords based on their positions in your webpage and META tag orders. For example, if you have the following META description tag:

meta name="description" content="Serving Donuts, Coffee, Muffins for the Bridgewater neighborhood - Save an additional 15% when you print our online coupon"

For many search engine, the words Serving Donuts is the most important if you also have a lot of "Donuts" in your site copy. Followed by Coffee, then Muffins. Then the question becomes: what about that 15% coupon for dozen donuts that I want people to search on? What if I want to capture the coffee crowd searching online?

Keyword rotation is a relatively simple concept to implement, you move your keywords around in your META tags, revise the site copy a little to reflect that change, and off you go. But there are three important points to consider:

1. Don't change them too often
Since it takes many search engine bots a month or more to crawl through your site again, rotating your keywords too often will not maximize your exposure in that keyword set. The frequency of rotation depends on a lot of variables, including but not limited to: domain age, number of keywords you want optimized, is the upcoming keyword set season-based, are they one-time special based, etc.

If your domain has a good history (1+ year), you can rotate as often as every 4 months. Since it takes about 1 monthe for the search engine to re-crawl your site and index, and your subsequent social marketing efforts to take effect, 4 months will help you really establish your position with those keywords. If you domain is realatively new (less than 1 year), you might want to hold off rotating any keywords and focus on building a strong keyword positions on your primary keywords set first.

2. Don't go off topic
While rotating keywords will help you gain positions on a large set of keywords, keep in mind your primary keyword set should not disappear. In the above example, Donuts and Coffee should always be mentioned simply because that's what you are. The bottom line: don't get too carried away with keywords rotation strategy.

3. Let your social media spearhead the strategy instead
Translation: Don't be lazy! While keyword rotation strategy can help capture the search crowd, you will still need to spend the time and broadcast to the world what you want people to know about. This is especially true for seasonal keywords and offer-specific keywords. Utilize your Facebook fan base and Twitter followers base and let them know more about you.

You should approach Facbook and Twitter differently when it comes to social media for your business

Oh yes, there is a difference, a huge one, between how people connect in Facebook and Twitter. So as you formulate your strategies for your business, you need to be aware of this difference and adjust your strategy accordingly.

1. Facebook is a site, Twitter is a messaging terminal
Facebook is more or less a site where you can create a company page, link your blog, post pictures and videos, create PPC ads and more. Twitter on the other hand, is like an instant messenger to all of your followers, nothing more than 140-characters. While you can link to virtually anything, most of the aforementioned functions in Facebook is offsite on Twitter.

2.Your connect with friends on Facebook, strangers on Twitter
On Facebook, you rely on your confirmed friends' friends list to reach out to people you don't know, while this restriction can be broken with the use of business page and PPC ads, connections are not automatic. On the other hand, you can pretty much follow anyone on Twitter, and people are more receptive to follow you back. With some auto following tools you can go as far as "set it and forget it" and watch your follower list grows. Obviously, I'm not suggesting this approach as the best-practice approach. But this "follower-building" dynamic will help you build a large follower base quicker.

Due to these differences (and there can be a lot more if you break both categories down), your approach to reaching out to these two groups of audience will have to be different. For Twitter, you can easily engage with your customers and prospects that talks about your brand and products by replying to their twitter post, whereas in Facebook your brand monitoring is only confined within your "friend" circle. On the other hand, customers who becomes a fan on your Facebook business page are most likely your A-list customers, and your communication to this group will focus on retaining their loyalty to your brand and utilize this space to host special events that attract your A-list customers to this channel.

Building Your E-mail list like Twitter and Facebook

I promised yesterday to talk about building your opt-in e-mail list and growing it. So I'll just cut straight to the point. Growing your opt-in e-mail list can be a pain, the only way you can grow your e-mail list is by hard work.

Go through your contact list
These are your A-list. Invite them, send a gentle introduction e-mail and be specific on what you are planning to do with your e-mail campaign. If it is knowledge product driven, give them a summary sample. Some will say you can just add them on as they can also unsubscribe, but I will say be careful with that practice as you may ended-up burning bridges instead of building them.

For those who want to use e-mail campaign to send out product-based advertisements, you should send them e-mails and get their consent, also make sure they put your e-mail address in your white list first as promotion-based e-mails often get flagged as spam.

Look through your Facebook Friends list
I hope you are on facebook, if not, it's time to do it. Facebook has been transforming from a pure leisure / personal model to a somewhat business friendly model, with business fan page, PPC (Pay-per-click) ads and alike. If you are already on facebook, try inviting your friends to your e-mail list. Rules from above do apply so be careful not to destroy relationships (business or personal) in the process.

How about that Twitter
When compared to Facebook, Twitter gives you higher chances to connect with prospects and random folks who shares the same topic interest. If you do not have Twitter, start there, build your follower base by searching for topic keyword and finding who is talking about that, add them to your following list.

Then invite them to your website and blog, encourage them to comment or engage users there. Then invite them the same way you would above.

How to keep them subscribed
Now that you have a good list built,the question becomes how to keep them subscribed. No doubt you'll have some that will unsubscribe here and there, so keep your content available through social media, blog and your own website so people who unsubscribe can have a chance to look at your content, this will allow them a chance to subscribe back again if they find your content interesting again.

Finally is content. Like I've said yesterday, content is the most important aspect to keep people engaged. Even if your e-mail campaign is focused on product deals and special offers, make sure your content allow people to engage with you as readers today have a very short attention span. grab their attention with your content and allow them to engage with you.

Now that you have your e-mail in your audience's inbox, how do you get them to read it (let alone click on it)?

I was asked this question many times before, and it seems to be one of the most important question one can ask when it comes to e-mail marketing. You spend hours and days developing the graphic layout and content, researching for the best e-mail distribution system out there and hit the send button. But in the end, the result hardly seem to justify the cost. The delivery sure is good (up to 100%), your open rate was awesome (about 70%) and CTR (click-through rate) less than 0.5%. Most alarmingly, your unsubscribe rate is through the roof. What happened?

1. The 'open rate' is not a reliable metrics to gauge reader engagement
First and foremost, you need to understand what 'open rate' really means. In Outlook or similar software, an open rate really means the user has scroll through his e-mails and yours were one of them. Roll through it again that's another open. even if he roll to your e-mail and than delete it in a second, that's an open. For users who wants to unsubscribe your e-mail, they have to 'open' it and click on the 'unsubscribe' button. So 'open rate' can be very deceiving. As a result, some e-mail distribution system also gives you a 'read rate'. A 'read' is registered when a user has your e-mail opened for more than a pre-defined time (usually 5-seconds or more). The theory is if the user has your e-mail opened for more than that pre-defined time, they are more than likely reading the actual content. However, this is only a small part to the story.

2. Make sure your readers know it is you before the images are downloaded
Most of you know this already, but it still needed to be said. Almost every e-mail clients block image from downloading automatically unless the user chooses to. That brings an interesting question to your e-mail design. Does you readers know the email they are looking at is from you without the images? Or is your content engaging enough that your readers will read without the images? To illustrate this point, take a look at this e-mail that came to my inbox this morning:

This is how your readers will see your e-mail. Every images displayed as if they are missing. For this e-mail sender, they use color schemes as an identifier to help their reader (like me) to identify who this is from.

Some of you might say: Hey, won't they know by the sender e-mail address? Just remember that most spammers uses forged e-mail headers to send you spam, so e-mail header cannot be the only identifier you use to gain your readers' trust.

Another way to identify yourself in HTML e-mails is to utilize ALT-tags for all images with WIDTH and HEIGHT definition. While this example doesn't show, ALT-tag will show in many e-mail clients in place of these images, giving readers another way to find out who this e-mail is from.

3. Give them multiple ways to engage with links and make the content sharable
This is a somewhat new trend in e-mail marketing. Make sure you connect your e-mail campaign with your social media content to further gain your readers' trust as well as making your content more accessible. This means placing a facebook icon, twitter icon, and any other social media destination of which you have exposure on, and let the sharing begin.

While this approach also requires you to deploy an online copy of your e-mail on these social media (or on your own web) channels, it gives your readers another way to engage with your content and share it with their friends and colleagues.

As this example from listrak shows, the social media icons located at the bottom allows readers to share this e-mail content with everyone in their network who might not be a customer of listrak or a subscriber of this e-mail. This gives your subscribers a chance to spread the word for you if they found your content to be engaging.

4. CONTENT IS KING!
So far I've only been talking about how you can engage with technologies and how to understand the analytic. At the end of the day, your e-mail campaign is only as good as your content. Even if you do everything right, you won't get your readers to engage if your content is less than interesting. Try to avoid launching an e-mail campaign filled with PR, but develop content that are relevant and beneficial to your readers, and this will only come if you know your readers. Stop buying e-mail list simply because you don't know who they are and what interest them, but rather spend the time to build an opt-in list with people that you know, or at least know what may interest them. I'll talk about how to build an opt-in list tomorrow.

In the mean time, feel free to comment and add whatever you feel is also important in the comment area.

e-mail distribution systems and why you should use them

If you are just starting to do e-mail marketing, or want to send out bulk email to 100+ customers, updating them about what you have been up to in a regular basis, you should do so with a e-mail distribution system for better delivery, HTML compliance, better in-box penetration, and enable open / click-through analytics.

SPAM filtering systems uses many identifiers in an email to see if your email is SPAM. One of which is the number of people you are sending out to. If your list contains hundreds of email addresses, it is likely that many system will flag your email as SPAM. Secondly, if the content of the email contains many SPAM-like keywords such as "Free", "Click here", "Sale", it will also be classified as SPAM.

While you can overcome problems with sending out your emails in batches, e-mail distribution systems will help you cut down the time you'll have to spend sending e-mails in batches and help you design, cross-check your content against SPAM filters, and monitor the outcome of your e-mail campaign with analytic.

Email Design
e-mail distribution systems often have template layout designs that you can use to dress up your e-newsletter or special offers. These layouts are HTML based and tested on all popular e-mail clients (note my previous post about HTML email design).

SPAM filter tests
Often referred as SPAM score, it calculates how likely your e-mail is going to be flagged as SPAM. It looks at many metrics such as image / text ratio, SPAM keywords / links population, Subject line keywords, etc.

Analytic and Message Monitoring
By far the most important reason why you should consider e-mail distribution system. They offer different degrees of analytic in terms of how many e-mails were successful delivered, how many were opened, how many click-through, how many unsubscribed, how many forwarded to their friends, etc. Many of these metrics show you a deeper picture of what really happened to your e-mail and the effectiveness of your campaign.

Where to start?
There are a lot of e-mail distribution systems out there, so you really should try out several and see how it works. For beginners I would recommend systems like iContact, Constant Contact as they are very simple to use and provide good functionality. For users that has a large e-mail list or users who requires different level of analytic, look at Exact Target, Lyris HQ, or Listrak. (Once again I would like to remind readers that I'm not endorsing any of these products, this is only a short list of what I have been exposed to, if you have ones that you want to recommand, please feel free to do so in the comment area.)