We’ve all seen them. Brands that could/should have valuable and growing online tribes that are equivalent to third party marketing bullhorns. Sadly, the simple realities of how social media operates is not part of that brand’s delivery in the online space. Offering direct tips to help them can even be seen as threatening, so it just marches on. We’ll talk about obvious fixes for email marketing, twitter, your blog, your video and your website in future posts. Let’s start with Facebook content.
Post less. Once per day max. Twice if you have actual breaking news to fit in. Relevancy drops due to over posting meaning your info is seen by less and less of your fanbase. Read more
Are you riding the new wave of opportunity effectively and in a resource smart way?
Traditional marketing agencies are great for long term projects like brochure creation/distribution, managing ad buys and re-brandings. What they do less well is help your business evolve into the new relevancy based marketing climate built upon quick thinking and ongoing multimedia communications.
What wins online is targeted listening, ongoing relevancy and speed. It’s noisy out there. Only relevant brands stay top of mind and gain market share. This requires one of two systems in place.
A capable person or team dedicated to and skilled at piloting your content initiatives and building relationships within your customer base and influencers/media.
Hiring someone to train your staff and/or do it for you.
Integrating this effort into your overall marketing strategy is modern day marketing and PR. It’s not just posting stuff to your social sites. It’s about building relationships with customers, media and influencers and growing the number of all of them. A bedrock business goal you’ve likely had since day one. It’s worth doing well. Either to catch up to your competition or get ahead of them. Having profiles and posting stuff is better than not, but it is the lowest common denominator. You’re better than that. Let’s get you a purpose and the tailored means to dominate.
I bring 10 years of content marketing and PR experience both as a freelancer and marketing manager for some of the nation’s largest ski areas. I’ll open up my brain for your business for the low cost of lunch. Maybe there will be a reason to work together, maybe not. Let’s find out.
Businesses that I work with typically select one of these services:
Half day staff training sessions on various modern marketing topics.
Social media development/management. Content, voice, advertising, updates.
Web video production.
Press release strategy and writing.
Marketing budget analysis.
SEO guidance and blogging purpose.
Crisis communications and change management consulting.
Marketing and communications solutions tailored to business.
See the “about” page for contact info and testimonials. Then let’s eat. Your business will thank you.
If you have yet to read the international coverage of the 18 year old Vermont ski racer who is (was) a member of the US Developmental Ski Team, then this post won’t make a lot of sense until you do. It hurts to read. Clearly a no win situation for the 11 year old girl, the 18 year old youth or any of the families. I do not need to recap what occurred. There are thousands of media outlets covering that. I also do not mean to condone the actions, but they deserve another look from a public relations standpoint.
Right now, the skier is being painted as an unapologetic affluent without a shade of remorse who cares little about where and upon whom he urinates. And sure, there might be lawyers advising against apologizing as it may convey guilt of some kind, but really this is about an 18 year old getting drunk and making a mistake. A mistake that while not pleasant to think about, did very little harm. We all get peed on once in a while by our dog, our baby, our grandparents, ourselves, it’s part of life. Read more
Sure, I could go out and buy this stuff on my own (to replace my beater setup) and then maybe find time and clients to use it with while also being employed full time, but where’s the fun and/or publicity in that? There was lots of interest in my recent video tips post (based on site traffic), so now seemed like an opportune time.
My goal with this challenge is to educate the curious about the tools needed to undertake video in-house (if you also have the skills/time to produce it) as well as potentially find a local business or organization that wants to have some on message video stories to share across their digital platforms for a very low time/money/brain power commitment. Read more
Yes, that’s a brutally obvious search term in the headline. If you are in Vermont and are either currently advertising on Facebook or thinking about it, then it served it’s purpose. Everyday I am served ads on Facebook for local products and services, which is great! The problem is that these ads are clearly not being optimized by the administrators. They are set up, launched and then hope becomes the strategy. I am currently overseeing a monthly spend for an employer and I spend some time each day checking in on our current ad renditions to make sure we are not needlessly burning budget on expensive cpc ads. Each day I create a few more versions tweaking the target audience, copy, bid, graphic, geography and more. In one day I had an ad deliver high fan conversion at a cpc of .37 and one deliver low fan conversion at a cpc of 1.10. Thankfully I shut off the 1.10 version after its first click. Had I let it run even a few more hours, it would be taking clicks away from my other lower priced ads.
Which ad do you want to shut off ASAP?
If you are spending say, $25 a day and paying $1 for them that’s 25 clicks. If you are paying .30 for them, that’s over 75 clicks. Think about that on a larger budget scale. Holy cow! If this is not something you can or are willing to do, hire someone, or hire me – the simple marketing solution to otherwise complex challenges. It helps if you are within a 45 minute drive of Waterbury, Vt. We’ll hang out.
The times when this is most important is right before you go to bed and right when you wake up. Why? Because that decreases the amount of hours that your campaigns are running unchecked. You don’t want to burn half your daily budget on bad ads because you didn’t shut them off do you? Facebook can be one of the most effective ways to target your local audience, but only if you have the know how and desire to properly manage and optimize your campaigns. That starts with a clear goal, continues with ongoing attention to detail in pursuit of that goal, and ends with a beer celebrating such targeted and verifiable results. It feels good to know you got the most for your money.
Maybe you’re asking well why don’t you just only buy the low-priced cpc performing ad groups? The answer is that Facebook determines cpc price based on a never-ending auction. You only control your bid price and the cpc is determined after it is running and being clicked on. Thus the need to watch and act quickly. You may want to run up to 30 different renditions of an ad group over the course of a few weeks. Most of them will be shut off quickly, the highest performers will take you to victory. Victory being the highest possible amount of targeted visitors or fans for the budget you have set. $100 can net you 100 visitors unmanaged, or 350 if you pay attention.
Three months and 5000 miles later we’ve made it to Vermont without significant incident. That’s a success in my book. Now it’s time to deal with storage units, uhauls, emptying the RV and getting it up for sale. Here it is on Craigslist if you want it. I won’t be recapping the trip right now, (that’ll be an ebook if I ever get around to it). It was simply too long and amazing to boil down to a blog post. It was less of a journey and more of a unique period of our lives, which just happened to be mobile.
What I will do right now, and what’s going to require a mass updating of online profiles, is inform that I have accepted a new job that I am thrilled about. Located in Montpelier, the New England Culinary Institute is looking to launch their brand and unique educational history and approach across the new media landscape from scratch with a balanced, professional and authentic gameplan. I get to be that guy (title: new media specialist) and I start in a week!
I’ll figure out a fun way to keep this blog hoppin while I’m at it, but maybe a bit less geared toward attracting freelance clients. In the meantime, I may use it to inform my social circle of the latest fun stuff we come up with over at NECI. Who’s hungry? I am, hungry to get started.
My most recent client was present on facebook, but was doing so as a friend page instead of a fan page. This meant that guests would need to request friendship to become connected and thus would offer all of their personal information to the campground. Both of those are major hurldes to participation. Also facebook can eliminate your profile at any time if you are improperly using the platform. That’s bad. You also miss out on social plugins for your main website. The list goes on.
“Converting” to a fan page is not the conversion that I’d like to look at – it’s a no brainer. Get it done if you have not. The important conversion to be aware of is in regards to how the newsfeed functions. The newsfeed is where your brand wins or loses on Facebook. You can have the best intentions and content on the internet, but if folks have not clicked “like” on your business, it will not make it to their eyeballs within Facebook’s platform. Sharing it? Not a chance. Sure they could come directly to your page, but that’s just as likely as visiting your website, which would not be taking advantage of why you are on Facebook to begin with.
I’ve seen a variety of statistics in regards to organic conversion on Facebook, meaning percentage of folks who like a brand when viewing their facebook page upon arriving at the wall. These have ranged between 10% and 30% depending on the brand. It’s low. They need help. A reason to join the club. The #1 way to gain more facebook conversion is to make sure that your primary website contains social plugins allowing visitors to like you without ever seeing your facebook page. Yup – you’re in the newsfeed and if your content is good (i.e. inspires interaction) then you can reap the rewards of a growing outbound network. The #2 way is to make sure that when a visitor reaches your facebook page and is not currently a fan, they are met with a reason to click like, rather than a mish mash of wall content. Here at Camp Gulf, they wanted to make the switch and do it without any development costs so a free landing tab for non fans that inspires conversion was the way to go. If you are not a fan, you’d see the like option right above the image on facebook.
Facebook can be a fantastic outbound communications medium, or it can be a time suck where you communicate only to a group of squeeky wheels or super fans. The difference is in how much effort you put into fan conversion and content that inspires interaction. Added bonus - be sure to grab your vanity url so it’s easier to direct folks to your page when interacting in a offline environment (i.e. facebook.com/yourbusiness). This looks a lot better in a brochure or on a business card when compared to ”search for us on facebook”.
Getting attention for your product or service used to be simple. There were customers you could reach and some you could not, based mostly on geography. You had a sign out front and maybe bought some ads in the mainstream media. If your business model was sound, that system worked out. Now that consumers have been empowered by ease of research via the internet, wearing the two hats of operator and advertiser is nowhere near enough to remain viable among your competitors.
Geography is much less of a barrier, costumer reviews and content driven business websites are paramount, and the business toolbox requires a nimble plan and diverse skill set. Sure – Nike, Pepsi, Kleenex and Carl’s Jr, etc can pay huge marketing shops or multiple boutiques gobbs of money to drive their SEO, SEM, social, display ads, print, tv, radio, merchadising, and outdoor.
But what about the local hardware store, hairdresser, B&B, golf course, vineyard, RV park, bike shop and the like? They need to wear many hats or work with a someone who does to assess their needs, solve some challenges, teach some tricks and not break the bank.
In our upcoming trip I look forward to taking my experience in SEO, PR, digital marketing, social media, video production, advertising, promotions, tourism, and events to folks who need a little help, without all the hype and overhead of large marketing firms that require large commitments or time and resources.
Speaking of many hats – check out Baby Kaylin wearing many hats a few nights ago as we pack for the trip. We hit the road Jan 4thish. Napa Valley, CA region is first destination. If the weather is decent, we’ll stay a few weeks.
Here’s a copy of my article that was included in the December 14, 2010 edition of TSIL.
SALES CHANNELS EVOLVING AS DIGITAL PLATFORMS MATURE
Gaining access to large groups of customers by offering discounts or commissions is not new, but the mediums in which these transactions occur are evolving rapidly. Liftopia has been a leader to emerge in this space and currently services resorts across the US and Canada, allowing resorts to offer specific inventory and reach a wider audience.
What’s next? An upcoming session at the National Ski Areas Association Western Winter Conference and Tradeshow in Alta/Snowbird entitled “Channel Surfing” will dive into the topic of evolving sales and marketing channels. Some resorts are moving quickly into this new space while others are using the latest digital tools to become their own online inventory broker.
Groupon is a recent entrant into the bulk lift ticket sales market. Burke Mountain, VT recently reported sales of 600 tickets at a 50% yield in a one-day sale. Keystone Resort, CO saw similar impressive sales numbers through a Groupon offer in the fall of 2009, but craigslist and eBay resales, along with the significant commission, were noted as challenges, according to Christian Knapp, Keystone’s senior brand director. Knapp is slated to be on the NSAA “Channel Surfing” discussion panel.
Direct selling through social media channels remains generally a faux pas, but “Facebook Friday” at Sunday River is entering its second year and seems to have found an audience, thanks to simplicity. Built as an “event,” attendees simply select that they will “attend” and in doing so they get a discount on the upcoming Friday lift ticket. Friday, Dec. 10 saw 482 “attendees.” Nick Lambert, Sunday River’s VP of marketing and sales, points to several positives: the “bring a friend” likelihood, making two-day weekends into three-day weekends, and snow conditions awareness.
Mike Henderson, social media strategist at One to One Interactive, noted that some resorts are focusing on addressing third party sales in a manner that appears to be a repeat of the recent decrease in mainstream media buys. He says that by building and cultivating the audience you want via an internet strategy – inclusive of SEO, SEM, email, advertising and social – the need to pay others to communicate or sell on your behalf decreases. – A.K.
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