Social Media Marketing Revolution

March 24, 2010

The experience of providing services and training in social media marketing and integrating those efforts into traditional marketing and PR strategy has led us to some concrete observations.  Our business is shifting into social business design.  Online platforms for community engagement and relationship development now impact every point in sales, marketing and customer service.  Read more

Social Strategy: Know your target audience

February 24, 2010

Thanks to Forrester Research for developing this tool to determine the mix of your perspective audience in social media. It’s based on Forrester’s Social Technographics® consumer classification model.

Social Media Path subscribes to this model as a tool for understanding your target audience.  Our business is based on building social strategy by first examining customer behavior.  The result is clear expectations and better customer relationships.

Features of this profile:

• For an explanation of these groups (Creators, Critics, etc.), see a presentation (8 slides) or read Chapter 3 of Groundswell
• Bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that are in each Social Technographics group.
• The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected.
• The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average.
• The message “No data available” appears when you request a profile for which Forrester survey samples are not large enough to provide a reliable answer. This occurs for age groups in Japan, Metro China, and South Korea. To see profiles in these countries, set the Age to “Not specified”.

Lifestreaming, Dashboards and Efficiency

October 22, 2009

Providing the business education in social media requires consistent research. We could use your help.
Read more

Getting Social Media Education Right

August 29, 2009

It’s harder than I thought it would be. Isn’t everything? We’re offering classes in social media and attendance online has been low. It’s mostly due to how we’re marketing. That, and the fact that we’re charging for a class that many may think they can learn elsewhere for free. Not so. I’ve taken a lot of the online free stuff. Simply put, you usually get what you pay for…not that I haven’t pulled an idea or two from a free webinar. Our classroom experience in teaching Social Media Fast Start for business was different.

We had a full and engaged classroom. Attendance was all over the map with representatives from small business, government, non-profit, corporate and “my mom sent me.” I was excited and having fun, and I think the class was too. So, i didn’t get to about 1/3 of my slides. I found myself torn between getting everyone’s questions answered and covering the material as promised.

This seems to be an ongoing challenge – I’ve now spoken to a variety of groups and the conversation goes in so many directions. There are many questions about how to do social media and market online. So, once again, based on customer and student feedback, we’re making some changes.

Our launch begins with a new 11Am – 415PM classroom workshop that includes the initial professional photography and a video clip needed to get online appropriately.  We’ll have enough time to cover basic tools, online properties and the know-how to get started marketing online.   We’re also offering free webinars in addition to more specialized online classes like Facebook Privacy and Security and Twitter Ethics and behavior.

We welcome feedback on what you think your biggest challenge is so that we can address it in class.

Digital Tools Required For CMO Jobs Today

August 17, 2009

This article posted on August 14, 2009 by David Kiley, BusinessWeek:

The last few years have been awfully hard on marketing and advertising professionals. Companies are cutting back headcount. Downward trends on ad spending have slaughtered ad agency staffing. Jobs are scarce. The weekly Brand New Day/CMO Club weekly survey shows, perhaps not surprisingly, that digital marketing expertise has far surpassed classic marketing experience as the most valuable asset you can bring to a job interview.

The CMO CLUB Weekly Poll Question: What expertise is most valuable to you today when hiring new talent in your marketing organization?

101 CMOs responded:

38.6% Digital marketing
21.8% Classical marketing
18.8% Marketing ROI/Metrics
11.9% Sales
8.9% Social Media

A few Quotes from CMOs in the club who responded:

“Everyone is talking about social media but I need new expertise in my organization for more comprehensive digital marketing skills.”
“People confuse good classical marketing skills with reliance on traditional media. I’m always looking for classical marketing excellence in assessing customer needs, developing the right customer segments and serving those segments from messaging, products, pricing and customer support. This drives the media decisions. Classical marketing expertise with the knowledge of leveraging digital marketing in the mix is the holy grail for us.”

“Marketing ROI/Metrics are important but I have lots of help in my organization in thinking this through. It’s a top priority for our business to understand and deliver based on ROI/metrics, but that’s not the primary skillset I need to add to the team to deliver this.”

Social Media Skills 101 Class

June 2, 2009

Registration is available for: Social Media Skills 101
Location: 3665 Bleckley St., Suite 101, Mather, CA 95655.

Description: Based on student demand and a need for better clarity around social media tools, Social Media Path has partnered with Peppers.TV to offer live, classroom Do-it-yourself education.
You get:
• A cursory overview of the how and why of Social Media
• Social online guidelines for business
• What web sites to use the most and how to use them
• How-to get fans and followers
• How-to build online \”expert\” proof that leads to subscribers and sales
• Time-saving browser tips
• How-to make your writing Google friendly
We’ll cover:
• Blogging
• Linkedin
• Facebook
• Youtube
• Twitter
Our class is fun, engaging, insightful and jargon-free. Best of all, you’ll leave with a renewed sense of how to build interactive online marketing into your business day without feeling overwhelmed. Social Media Skills 101 will alleviate any fear or apprehension of embracing social technology.
Start Time: 14:00
Date: 2009-06-25
End Time: 16:00

Basic Social Media Tool Flow

April 25, 2009

Bringing Social Media Path to life has come with some interesting challenges – like my plugin breaking on the “classes” page in Internet Explorer.  Despite the challenges in ramping up to site launch, much of my thinking has been focused around what and how to teach in our upcoming webinars. The bit-more-than-basic-how-to class “Social Media Fast Start” is an opportunity to enable beginners on a path of knowing their customers better.  As the desire of business to market through connecting and sharing online grows, likewise does the confusion and feeling of being overwhelmed.

So, my mantra through course development continues to be, “How can I make online marketing and community development easier to do and to manage?”

I developed this model, which I’ll be discussing in detail in class. I’m interested in any comments.  I realize there can be an unlimited number of complex interactions between tools, platforms and technologies.  That’s what makes it the web right?  I left widgets and applications off the model in consideration of my prospective class audience.  I’m sure there are more tools that are not occurring to me.  Care to add something?