On my part, after reading about the campaign on Joe Pulizzi’s blog, I eagerly sought out the videos, rewatched both commercials, and scoured the blogosphere for more coverage. By the end of the day I had not only further publicized the campaign via facebook and twitter; I had physically told at least three people about it. That’s right, actual word of mouth!

But while the blogosphere, twitterverse, and facebookalaxy (too much?) were all buzzing about Old Spice, one burning question plagued every marketer. Will this actually translate to sales? Well, ladies and gentleman, the numbers are in.

Since the campaign launched in February, Old Spice sales have been on the rise. Brandweek reported that Old Spice sales rose 55% over the past three months, and 107% in the last month alone (stats published by Nielsen). Though it can only officially be called a correlation, I think it’s safe to consider this campaign a triumph in social media marketing. Mashable’s Stan Schroeder went as far as calling it “the archetype of a successful social media campaign,” and that was before any sales figures were released.

Will anyone be able to replicate this lightning-in-a-bottle campaign? Probably not.  There is a huge novelty element to this strategy that can’t be undervalued.  Old Spice was the first brand to tap into its social network in such a direct and, let’s face it, hilarious way. How then, can Old Spice’s success apply to you and your company? How can you translate it into your own content marketing efforts? First of all: don’t copy it. A lot of people are going to try and copy this campaign, and the public will know exactly what you’re up to.

Old Spice Guy is just one man, albeit an incredibly handsome one. He couldn’t possibly address more than a small fraction of Old Spice’s ever-increasing followers on twitter. But the mere possibility that he might led thousands of web users to jump on board and tweet their little hearts out.  In the same vein as the Creators Project, which continues to draw in hundreds of facebook fans daily, Old Spice offered the mere possibility of something great. In this case, being personally addressed before millions of online viewers… by an incredibly handsome man in a bath towel.

That is a tactic you can use. Provide the possibility of something incredible, but keep it limited. Make a demand for it. If you don’t know where to start in terms of devising that inspired must-have reward, why not ask your customers? What do THEY want? Tap into them as a resource, and then implement their ideas so they know they’re being listened to. Whatever plan of action you take, it should single out customers/readers/etc as individuals that are uniquely valued. It can be done at random, or maybe as a reward for loyal followers.

And if you can think of an angle that is really appropriate for your customers, why not create something that they will actually enjoy? Your marketing content should provide useful information for your clients, but you can also have a bit of fun with it. If you’re not sure you can pull it off,  consider hiring writers to create the kind of smart, punchy content that just might get your social network buzzing. After all, who doesn’t need a bit of light, funny, engaging fluff now and again?

Nicola Fairhead is an ideaLaunch editorial intern with a ferocious appetite for writing, editing, and consuming content.  She has quickly become a content marketing evangelist.

Image courtesy of http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/3291015

Step Back:

Assuming you already have a variety of social media presences on the web, figure out which ones bear the most fruit. Where are the conversations taking place? Which community has the most active users? These are your targets for finding new blood, people who are already taking part.

Sync Your Profiles:

By interlinking your profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, YouTube, et. al), you have a unified front. You can connect with a variety of people on a variety of platforms in this way, as well as access their information on those same platforms.

Share Your Needs:

Use your established platforms to put your needs out there. Those who respond aren’t simply trolling job boards or resume reservoirs for work, but actually taking part in your online conversations. These writers are more likely to already have a firm grasp on your audience (themselves) and will likely be able to write web content that fits your needs.

Lou Perseghin lives in Providence, RI and works for a non-profit managing volunteers, recruiting members and handling marketing efforts.

Image from backgroundalert.com

With brick and mortar stores, it’s easy. If a customer comes in and makes a purchase, that’s a sale. While ultimately that’s still the goal, the process of getting to the sale is much more involved now than simply putting an ad in the Yellow Pages. With all the new ways to spread the word, how do you know you’re improving conversion rates from interest to sale and having an impact?

One of the best ways is to track your communication, ideally through an employee working in social media monitoring productivity. Metrics like how many questions have you received through your channels, how many positive/negative interactions have you had and how many thank you’s have you received are valuable, as is how those interactions have grown or changed over time. These twitter tactics and Facebook practices show that you care about your user/customer base.

As well, utilizing link, shortening services such as bit.ly or tinyurl allow you to track the number of clicks over time as well as the source of those links (and where they’ve been shared,) allowing you to track how your customers interact with each other.

So how does this translate to your business growth? It’s all about what people are saying, and if your business is a positive contributor to the social media world (marketing on twitter or Facebook) and considerate of the way your customers access you, word of mouth will take over on its own.

Lou Perseghin lives in Providence, RI and works for a non-profit managing volunteers, recruiting members and handling marketing efforts.

Image from sbsearchmarketing.com

Rules are for robots. This is the basic logic behind Mike Volpe’s explaination of “Why a Social Media Policy is Stupid” in his HubSpot post. He questions why companies feel the need to make specific policies for social media practices when they have never had explicit rules for any other types of person-to-person communication. I think his point is worth considering. What kind of attitude do you want to form around your business’s use of social media? If it starts to become regarded as programmed and robotic,  you risk missing the whole point of social media marketing in the first place – utilizing connections between people.

No one is stopping you. According to Seth Godin, “Validation is Overrated.” It’s always nice to have some positive reinforcement now and again, but I think this encouragement is especially helpful in the realm of blogging and social media. Online forums have bestowed us with a new ability to speak directly and instantly to people who want to hear us, so why not fully utilize this freedom?

Get to the point. Time and time again I’ll start excitedly telling a story, really getting into it – word-for-word dialogue, hand motions – and then I’ll look up to take a breath and realize that no one is listening to me anymore. It is always so tempting to give as many details as possible when talking about something that really excites us. But this is not how to keep listeners. In his article “Simplify and Package the Sale,” Chris Brogan gives some useful tips on how engage your customers with simple, to-the-point information so that they stay as excited as you are about your product.

The cover matters. The old “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” adage doesn’t cut it when it comes to marketing content, especially online marketing content. Mary White reminds us that it doesn’t matter how good your content is if people don’t stick around long enough to read it, and she outlines some useful strategies for how to “Enhance Website Content with Visual Appeal.”

From the experts: “6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web.” Mashable consulted six experts in the field of web marketing to put together this list of the biggest challenges you can face in trying to manage an online marketing campaign today. While it’s important to stay up-to-date with the constant feed of new ways you can utilize social media, it’s also important to stop for a minute and think about the roadblocks you may encounter once you dive in – and how you should best deal with them.

Marcella Vieraitis is a new summer intern at ideaLaunch. She loves writing and editing, and is soaking up all there is to learn about the world of blogging, social media, and content marketing.

Last weekend, I witnessed an astonishing thing. Concrete personal benefit as a direct result of my social networking efforts.  The Creator’s Project, “a new network dedicated to the celebration of creativity and culture across media,” held a competition on its facebook page. Whoever could accrue the most “likes” on a single post would win two tickets to the Creator’s Project official launch in New York, featuring musical performances, films, and art exhibits.  Simple.  A friend of mine dutifully wrote a post, then sent a facebook message to a limited circle of friends with an emotive and humorous back story, a link, and a simple request.

Not a bad start, but not a great one either.  And definitely not enough to secure a win. Your main base of friends/readers/customers/what have you can be your greatest promotional asset. Don’t be afraid to appeal to them, albeit sparingly. Luckily I didn’t need to be asked—the content marketing deviant in me immediately came to life. Surely this was the perfect opportunity to use social networking as a marketing tool? After a solid hour’s effort, I solicited a large fraction of my friends list, with five separate drafts tailored to different audiences within my network.

Making a demand of the network you’ve spent so long cultivating can be a delicate process. Keep these key points in mind when you start drafting:

• Make it personal. No one wants to be bullied by a robot.
• Provide some back story so your readers know what they are supporting. But don’t drag it out.
• Acknowledge that you are asking something of them.
• State your gratitude along with any benefits they could receive.
• Humor helps, but make sure to be sincere.

While my recruitment rate was less than 50%, that in addition to my friend’s previous efforts was enough to secure two tickets to the Creators Project’s New York event.  And there you have it! Concrete results.

In this case I made a request based on my confidence in existing relationships.  And that is why you’ve spent so much time cultivating your company’s online persona. You too are developing relationships that you can one day call upon. Provide support for your target market.  Return their comments. Show that you care about their input. If you have really taken the time to invest in solid content marketing that actually provides a service for your readers, you may find that they’ll be willing to champion your cause when the time comes. Then when you really need them, go ahead and make the ask.

But the real winner in this story, of course, is the Creators’ Project. I can pat myself on the back all I want, but by offering even the mere chance of something truly phenomenal, they got me to do their work for them. The Creator’s Project facebook page is gaining fans daily by transforming existing followers into active recruiters.  Have you offered your readers something spectacular lately?

Nicola Fairhead is an ideaLaunch editorial intern with a ferocious appetite for writing, editing, and consuming content.  She has quickly become a content marketing evangelist.

Image courtesy of http://andpluckyourstrings.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/man_loudspeaker.jpg

So it’s no wonder when social media sites like Facebook and Twitter started sprouting up, I initially steered clear. Why would I want another way to spread my personal business around?

I was even more skeptical when social media started infiltrating the business world. However, I have to concede that I am now a convert.

Fast-forward a year or so from my mortified self to my entrepreneurial self, and the Mom Circle was suddenly my most useful business tool. My neighbor and I wanted to break into the lemonade stand business, but we lived in a cul-de-sac – great for scootering, horrible for lemonade stand publicity. The solution to getting ourselves recognized was the Mom Circle. We launched our business the same weekend my mom was holding a garage sale, and with just one word from my mom, suddenly we were known across all of town as reputable beverage-selling duo featured at a trusted business event. That was all it took. We made twelve whole dollars!

My lemonade stand taught me a simple, but genius, marketing rule: use your connections. And now I see that sites like Facebook and Twitter make connecting with people easier than ever. Even if I don’t like sharing the play-by-play of my personal life through social media sites, there is no more denying that they are extremely useful business tools. So I guess there really isn’t a reason to be afraid, and I want to share my newfound fearlessness. If you take the time to make social media sites work in the best interest of your business, they will only help you. Unfortunately, I can’t promise that your mom won’t ever embarrass you again.

Marcella Vieraitis is a new summer intern at ideaLaunch. She loves writing and editing, and is soaking up all there is to learn about the world of blogging, social media, and content marketing.

Image from TVPartners.nl

User-generated content (UGC), also known as consumer-generated media, is any content—blog posts, videos, news, images, wikis, reviews, music, tweets—created by end-users and published on the web. It’s the two-way dialogue all over the web today, in contrast to the one-way media distribution system of the pre-Web 2.0 era, when content was created and distributed exclusively by journalists, editors and those who held the web-publishing reins. UGC is the digital democracy.

For the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to categorize UGC into two types: UGC on your own website and UGC on the greater web, published in forums, review sites, social media sites and beyond.

UGC on Your Own Website: Asset or Liability?

UGC is a great way to open the lines of communication between your customers and your company. When customers are empowered to share their thoughts, experiences and opinions on your website, your employees can immediately respond to their concerns.

UGC is a cost-effective market research tool that provides real-time data (good or bad). Furthermore, this free content boosts the SEO value of your website and therefore can increase traffic and potentially your bottom line.

Build UGC in as a part of your content marketing plan, and be sure to allocate staff to monitor the comments made on your website. These editors should verify that the content is relevant, delete offensive language/images and spam, and be aware of copyright infringement laws. Be sure that those who publish on your website agree to guidelines that state (among other rules) the content they publish is original. Here are some other legal ramifications to be aware of before embarking on your UGC plan.

While there are a few precautions to take when implementing a UGC strategy on your own site, the risks are worth the potential benefits.

UGC in the WWW: Know What People Are Saying about Your Brand

Not only should you monitor the UGC on your own site, but you should also know what people are saying about your brand all over the web—which brings us to the other kind of UGC.

UGC in this sense is a bit trickier because you don’t have the ability to delete something when you don’t own the site on which it appears. It’s a free country, and people will express their First Amendment rights to say whatever they want, from what they had for breakfast to how poor your customer service is or how your product is an over-priced dud. The internet amplifies that voice on an unprecedented scale. But don’t despair. Whether positive, negative or somewhere in between, knowing what people are saying about your brand, service or products can empower you to change that sentiment if it’s negative or capitalize on it if it’s positive.

Here are a few UGC-monitoring pointers courtesy of SEMPO Institute:

1. Compile a list of keywords to monitor. Include company name, names of products/services and names of certain employees and management. Think of every keyword variation possible.
2. Create RSS feeds for branded terms on Icerocket, Technorati, Google News, Yahoo! News and Bing News.
3. Compile all of these feeds into one reader, like Google Reader (which I use and love).
4. Set up free Google and Yahoo! alerts so that you get regular email notifications when something featuring these keywords is published online.
5. Consider hiring social media monitoring companies like Cymfony or Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon’s Opinion Analysis Platform is a tool that monitors what people are saying about a brand, product, market or the competition so that businesses can distill meaning beyond just “positive/negative” and take the appropriate action. This data also helps prove the ROI of online marketing initiatives.

Responding to Negative UGC

The worst thing you can do about negative UGC is to take the ostrich approach. We all know about Motringate in 2008 and the subsequent Motrin boycott—the company got an “F” in Social Media Monitoring 101 first because of their failure to listen to their target audience before running an insensitive ad, and second because of their inability to reply to the backlash in a timely manner. Here are a few steps you can take to minimize damage to your brand image.

If the claims are false:

1. Contact the website and ask them to kindly retract the statements. Use supporting facts.
2. Read the website’s rules for UGC; sometimes users don’t follow them. For example, have you heard of JobVent.com, a site where current and past employees can review their company? Do you know what former employees are saying about your business? If “venters” mention names of management in a negative context, you can contact the site and ask them to remove the offensive posts per the website’s guidelines.
3. If you get no response from the website, add a comment stating your company’s position. Be sure to support it with evidence.
4. Be proactive and publish a response on your website.

If the claims are true:

1. Add a comment or post to explain your side of the story. Even better if you can get a manager or C-suite representative to make the comment themselves, adding another layer of credibility.
2. Clearly state how your company plans on responding to the issue and take action. Offer a contact email address and or/telephone number so that people can get in touch with an associate trained to respond to the issue.
3. If you’re really in a pickle, do like BP and hire a professional reputation management company to do the dirty work.

Do you have a story to share about allowing UGC on your own site, or brand monitoring on the web? What are some of the lessons you’ve learned?

In the world of blog marketing, people link to your content, not websites. Those few friends who read your blog are your most valuable asset, your first link to driving traffic inbound. Linking your existing social networks is the best way to employ this established group, but you’ll need to do some work on your end.

According to web information company Alexa, Facebook is the second most visited website in the world. Adding a ‘Like’ button to your posts is an unobtrusive way to promote your blog downstream to the networks of your friends. Having friends share your links in this way will bring a new audience to your site; it’s up to you to give the content to keep them coming back and, ideally, sharing your posts with their own networks.

Another quick and easy way to get the word out is to see who’s ‘Liking’ your content and engaging them. Saying thank you and promoting their site through your own network goes a long way in building a base of readership.

Two simple changes can help you steadily build a base of readership for your blog, but it’s up to you to offer them a reason to keep coming back!

Lou Perseghin lives in Providence, RI and works for a non-profit managing volunteers, recruiting members and handling marketing efforts.

Image from glamtings.files.wordpress.com

Even Chris Brogan,  an undisputed master of social media,  admits to a few pitfalls as his operations have grown. “My first attempt at managing my inbox was a failure because I wasn’t very human about it,” says Chris.  And just by admitting his failure, he shows how great he is at being, well, human.

“In every case that you build tools and process into your business,” says Chris,  “work out how you’ll keep it a human business: relationship-minded, sustainable, and friendly.“

Wise words for any budding entrepreneur. But automated responses aren’t always the culprit. In an effort to gain credibility and come off as a no-nonsense professional, you may want to stay all business. Dry.  Formal.  Never erring from your corporate message. But social media in particular seems to reject that approach. In our last blog post, Dawn Alcott explained that heavy hitters like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, and J. Money succeed because “they aren’t afraid to be themselves.” Platforms like twitter and facebook provide the means to establish a friendly face for even the largest corporation. Take advantage of these faculties. Crack a joke. Share a (relevant) anecdote. Sometimes all it takes is an appropriately placed “?!?” or even, dare I say it, a telling emoticon to show that yeah, you’re a person. A person who, apparently, when necessary, can  curl their mouth into the shape of an S.

This isn’t a new concept by any means. But it remains relevant whether you are a fledgling company preparing to hire your first employee, or a multinational conglomerate. If you are struggling to establish not just your company’s identity, but its personality, keep trying. Emote. Add a conversational tone to your auto-responses. Or, if either a) you’re a bit on the bland side yourself or b) you really don’t have the time to be human, try hiring writers (who tend to be bottomless pits of personality) for your content marketing needs.

And If you absolutely have to use  robots, why not use Wall-E as a model? Develop robots that will bring grown men to tears!

Nicola Fairhead is an ideaLaunch editorial intern with a ferocious appetite for writing, editing, and consuming content.  She has quickly become a content marketing evangelist.

image courtesy of http://www.hooversbiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/sadrobot.jpg

Maybe you’ve heard about Facebook’s problems of late. Complaints about the social networking giant’s treatment of its users’ information have been brewing for a while, but hit a crescendo around April when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be deepening its connections with partner sites—whatever that means. Consumer watchdog groups, members of Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission have all expressed concerns over Facebook’s privacy policies, or lack thereof. Recent changes to Facebook’s privacy policies, including cutting the number of settings from 50 to about 15, and reducing the number of pages users have to sift through from 7 to 3, have not satisfied the more vocal critics.

In addition to the bad PR, this whole privacy fiasco—and things like Quit Facebook Day—could spell money trouble down the road as well. The bulk of Facebook’s revenue comes in the form of advertising dollars. Advertisers love Facebook, and its 400 million global users. When a user creates a Facebook profile, information gets handed over to the site—and its partners. Yes, and you didn’t think anyone really cared that you like to travel, take long drives, and eat ham sandwiches, did you? Somewhere out there, however, is an advertiser that cares very much. It is this information that allows advertisers to easily break down users’ demographics and tailor their advertising—this gives them a huge ROI.

What Facebook has seemingly failed to do is find that happy medium between respecting its users and providing advertisers with useful information. If Facebook just hands over users’ information to the advertisers willy-nilly, then eventually people will stop using the site, and advertisers will move on to the next big thing. However, if Facebook overcompensates and becomes less advertiser-friendly, the same outcome will occur. If Facebook had just respected its users’ information from the very beginning,  advertisers wouldn’t have gotten used to having such free reign over their market. See? There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Of course, 23, 384 people out of 400 million isn’t likely to make a huge dent in Facebook’s wallet, but Quit Facebook Day could be a sign of a trend, and Facebook needs to learn to walk a razor-thin line between its commitments to its users and to its partners.

Lesson learned—know (and respect) thy audience.

Image from sdow.semanticweb.org