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Social Media Impact on your Marketing: Free eBook

January 8th, 2010 Matt Baril 4 comments

 

So here we are, it's 2010 and a new decade just started! In order to celebrate this, I decided to give away a short research I worked on with 3 other people last semester. It's all about the impact of Social Media on your marketing and the research is based on 2 real case studies complemented by stats and data taken from the best blogs and books. We heavily relied on the teachings of famous Social Media Rockstars such as Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Charlene Li and the likes.

This research concluded my 4 years of business undergrad and it was one of the project I enjoyed doing the most in my student career! We learned a lot and met really nice people along the way. I'd like to take the time to say thank you to the the people from the  two businesses whom we interviewed for their generosity to share so willingly and freely their experience and thoughts about Social Media and the way it has impacted their marketing. The companies' name were changed because of privacy concerns, so I won't name all the people here, but you'll recognize yourself!

The two companies are successful high tech businesses located in Vancouver, BC. One is focused on hardware technologies and is a startup with less than 5 employees. The other is a well established design company with about two dozens employees. Both have won many prizes for their accomplishments and success.

 

So here is the eBook: Social Media Impacts on Marketing

 

What has been the impact of Social Media on your company? Do you agree with us? Are we missing things?

 

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You Have a Friend Request

October 15th, 2009 Matt Baril No comments

 

Facebook is a fantastic tool! It’s crazy everything you can find out about people you think you know… This just hit me today while I was about to send a message to a friend of mine! Pretty troubling…

 

 

 

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Yahoo meme: the good, the bad and the ugly

September 29th, 2009 Matt Baril No comments
 
For those of you who didn’t know yet, Yahoo has released its own Twitter service in August 2009 and called it Yahoo! meme. The site is still in alpha and you can join only if invited by a friend. Well a pure stranger kind enough to share his invites also works since I don’t think Yahoo! actually performs a background check on friendships, just for the record. So I had the chance to get an invite and test it out tonight. The whole thing is still new to me, but I thought I could share my first impressions here and hopefully trigger a conversation with other people who have used it and people who are curious about it.
 
 
meme_length
 
 
 
The Good
Max of 2000 characters: Contrary to most of what you can find online, there is a limit and it is 2000 characters which is pretty awesome! Twitter forces people to be concise, but sometimes it’s so short that the meaning can be lost. Meme shortens your message the way facebook does it and you click on expand to read the whole thing.
Text, Images, Video & Music: This isn’t new since tumblr does the same, but for people used to Twitter, this is more than welcomed. Meme makes it extremely easy to share rich content.
Easy to “repost” aka retweet: Read something you like, just click the repost icon next to the post. That’s it, no need to copy paste, write RT or whatever, one click is all that is required from you.
Possibility to comment posts aka tweets: I love that one. It’s exactly like facebook once again, you can comment anything someone has posted! This is something lacking in Twitter and makes conversations awkward and difficult. It’s very difficult to comment on something that has been posted few tweets ago.
 
 
The Bad
No DM: Yeah, I mean DM like in Direct Message. No ways to communicate in a private way with your buddies… too bad eh!? Well I guess you can use your “ymail” account for that, cause you’ve guessed it, Yahoo! forces you to create one.
Themes are limited, non customizable, and… purple: Design is slick, but themes suck. It’s a direct copycat of Twitter and there isn’t much you can change. I’ve got to be fair, this is an alpha version and hopefully this will be fixed for the grand release. Hopefully you can cope with the purple in the meantime.
 
 
The Ugly
No possibility to have conversation, leaving you with comments only: Yeah that’s right. No DM, no @, no nothing. Just can’t have a freakin’ conversation other than commenting some random posts on your friends’ dashboard. Pretty impressive… So if you were looking to communicate and no so much broadcast yourself, then stick with Yahoo! Messenger, cause now you’ve got an account for that.
Open a zillion tabs: Don’t know if I messed up my settings, but as soon as you click on something, a tab opens up. Suffice to say that it gets your browser cluttered pretty quickly, just the way Internet Explorer would get your taskbar cluttered back in the days when we didn’t have tabs… Jeez, am I that old?
Sign up process: Oh man! That one was tough… I had to put my postal code, birth date, gender, and the whole thing. And don’t try to skip anything, Yahoo! is watching you. In comparison, tumblr requires 3 things: email, password (no retyping required) and your nickname.
 
 
meme_dashboard
 
 
 
As a conclusion, I don’t see much coming out of this. Yahoo!’s community has been shrinking at a faster pace than the Arctic ice, and it will be difficult for the company to tap into its customer base to create a movement. Unless we keep an eye closed on Yahoo!’s track record over the last couple of years in Social Media. Most of what Yahoo! has done can be relatively easily copied by Twitter and is already available on tumblr. Yahoo! has decided to use their new buddy’s way of doing things: Microsoft. Be a quick follower, imitate the best, buy the best and throw millions of $$$ at your projects. Unfortunately this is Social Media and it’s just not how it works. This is too little and it’s also 3 centuries late. Check out tumblr instead.
 
 
If you’re curious and want to give meme a shot nonetheless, let me know in the comment section below and I’ll send you an invite. I’ll break Yahoo!’s rule and send you one even though we’re not really friends… yet.
 
 
 
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An Introduction to the Social Media Planning Cycle

September 13th, 2009 Matt Baril 3 comments
  
   As you probably know by now, it’s easy to spend a whole day on Social Media websites not accomplishing much. Effectiveness should be central to your strategy if you wish to get the best results out of Social Media, and maybe have a life, you know with real people like friends and family! After some reading, some critical thinking and some trials and errors here are things I’ve learned and that I think you should consider if you’re serious about Social Media and want to use it professionally:  
 

Social Media Planning Cycle

·         Have a personal/corporate mission statement. This is a good starting point, because it will help you to stay authentic. It’s easy to try to write and say things you think people want to read or hear, but it’s most likely to fail in the long run. You might be wrong about what people really want to read/hear and by not being yourself, Social Media will become a burden for you, something unnatural in which you have to put effort. This may seem obvious, but as your followership will start growing you’ll probably feel pressure at some point not to let your people down and that’s where the risk kicks in. A mission statement will also help you being more consistent in what you say and how you say it. If you don’t have a mission, here are questions that could help you:
 
  • What’s most important for you or your business?
  • What gives a meaning to your life or to your business?
  • What is it that you or your business want to be?
  • What is it that you or your business want to do?
  • How do you want or how do you plan to achieve it?
 
"Eg. I will grow and become a better person by investing myself in meaningful relationships with great people. I will be an example to my community by pursing my dreams and values while never fearing obstacles."
 
In this example, there is no mention of Social Media and that is absolutely normal! Unless Social Media is the one thing that matters in your life, it shouldn’t be in your statement. It gives you a bigger purpose than just Social Media and you can use your mission for your bio when you sign up for different Social Media websites.
  
·         Figure out what you want to get out of Social Media. Do you want to sell your products, build up your brand, or your personal credibility? Maybe you just want to keep in touch with friends and experiment with Social Media? Whatever it is, make sure you figure it out. Many people have no clear idea of what they want to do with Social Media and they become scattered and inconsistent, and this will alienate your audience and might make them leave. If you plan to use Social Media for business purposes, according to an article published on mashable, there are at least five ways to use Social Media: 
 
  • Community Building
  • Product Research
  • Customer Service
  • Marketing & Promotion
  • Transparency
You might want to give a read to this DoshDosh article also. Finally, figuring out what you want to get from Social Media is also very helpful since it will allow you to create your own strategy.
 
·         Create your strategy. Now is time to do some research and see what tools would be best aligned with what you want to get from Social Media. You want a job? LinkedIn might be a great place to start. You want to build up your brand? Twitter, Facebook and Youtube might be tools you want to have a look at. Etc. No matter what your strategy is, make sure it’s dead simple. It has to be easy to remember and to share. The last thing you want is a list for your strategy, cause if it’s too complicated, you’re almost sure to give up on it. You’ll also save time by targeting a set of tools that are well adapted for what you want to do. However, the beauty of Social Media is that it’s not defined, there is no restriction in the way you use it. You want to use Twitter to find a job, great go ahead! Use your creativity and do something special! There are no wrong tools in Social Media, it all depends of how you use it, how you make yourself noticeable. No matter what tools you decide to use, stick to them, otherwise this will get out of hand and you’ll be spending your days and nights on Social Media websites. I’ve personally decided to use LinkedIn, Twitter and a Blog and I stick to it. 
 
·         Set goals. Strategy is good, but without goals it’s most likely to go nowhere. Now, setting goals might sound way easier than it really is. It could be based on the number of followers you have, the number of hits you get, your sales increase, recommendations you get, etc. But most of these measures are biased. Not all your followers are high quality followers, actually most of them might just follow you in the hope you’ll follow them. Hits on a web site might be boosted with some advertisement, but it doesn’t mean people are actually taking the time to read your articles. How do you make the difference between an increase in sales due to traditional marketing tools (eg. Posters, commercials, flyers, etc.) and an increase due to Social Media? Those are not easy questions and there has been a lot of discussion about Social Media and ROI (return on investment). There are mainly 2 schools of thought on this, one says pure business ROI is the only way to go, money vs result, and the other one claims it’s useless to keep track of your results with traditional ROI since Social Media is redefining the way we do business and marketing. I’d say both are very important, you want to know how many visitors produce how much revenue, but you also want to know about your brand awareness and whether your reputation is in good shape. These are much more difficult to measure, but do have an important impact on your business. For a great article about measuring Social Media, read this article from Mashable. Finally, just like any other goals, your goals should be SMART. This is an acronym that is widely used in business schools and something you should be aware of. SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. For a more detailed explanation, look up on Wikipedia. 
 
·         Take action. This is probably the most obvious step. Make sure you do what you have plan to do. Follow the plan.  
 
·         Monitor your progress. You want to know whether you’re achieving your goals or not. That’s why having measurable goals is convenient, and these goals should be evaluated and reviewed on a regular basis. If they are not realistic or too easy to reached, it’s important to adjust consequently. Moreover, you want to see what impact you have and you can use a set of tools that will help you with just that. The first tool is Google Alert which will send you emails (as-it-happens, once a day or once a week) based on the keywords you want. For example you want to track your name, business name or brand and that’s exactly what Google can offer you. I personally track my name as-it-happens, so every time someone publishes anything with the keywords “matt baril” I get an email with the link to the article or web page. The second tool is TweetBeep, which does pretty much the same as Google Alert, but for Twitter. It will send you a digest of all the Tweets that were published and contain your keywords. If you’re interested in tracking tools, read this article from Zubeta.com which presents 10 great tools to keep track of your brand. Your goals shouldn’t be changed unless it’s obvious they are too easy to reach, unrealistic, or not aligned with your strategy, otherwise, don’t change them!  
 
·         Adjust consequently. If you’re not on target with your goals, you have to do something about it. You can ask for help, you can borrow a good book about the topic at your public library, you can try new innovative ways to use Social Media, etc. Your possibilities are endless, but if your strategy is failing to reach your goals and if your goals are realistic, you need to do something about it. Move forward to “Build your Strategy” and iterate once more.
 

  

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How are you coping with Social Media?

September 6th, 2009 Matt Baril 2 comments

 

While I was in the library, looking for a good book on time management (how ironic) I came across Julien Smith‘s blog post about Social Media and reliability/productivity. Julien claims that "there seems to be a correlation between amount of time spent on social media and ability to get work done." and I couldn’t agree more with him. At least it’s true for. I spend so much time reading, replying and creating content that I have no time left to do anything else than the absolute necessary.

Click on the picture to see the original picture.I’ve become a News addict and Apple has facilitated this. I installed apps on my iPod Touch and I read NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail (Canadian newspaper), Huffington Post, AP, Business Week, Cyberpresse (French Canadian Newspaper). Once I’m done with the traditional newspaper, I fire Regator, an excellent app which offers "a directory of the web’s best blog posts hand picked", and spend some more time reading and I pay a particular attention to "What’s Hot", an option that works like Twitter trending topics. I then log in to my Twitter account and start reading all the tweets I’ve received and the articles some tweets lead to. Only then, I can start breathing, I know what’s going on in the world, but I’m not done, I need to know about what really interests me now! So I Iog to my gmail and reply to all the emails that were sent to the 6 email addresses that gmail manages for me. Once I’ve replied to everyone, it’s time to see what TweetBeep and Google Alert have for me. I track what’s been published on my  favourite topics and I also make sure I know if anyone has talked about me on the web! Now that I know what’s going on in the world and I’m up-to-date with topics that really interest me, I can happily log in to Facebook and update my profile and share links of articles I just read. I’ll obviously take time to reply to my friends and make sure I wish happy birthday to people who it is their birthday and send a couple of message to people I haven’t talked to for a while. Now I need to do one last thing before I can start my day, log in to hotmail and mainly delete my spam, but also to look if I got messages, just in case someone hasn’t notices I’ve been using gmail for 5 years now.

Of course, this kind of life is a non sense, but when you want to be in the loop that’s not the feeling you’ve got, until you’re totally exhausted and you realized you haven’t got a lot done lately. People who use social media for professional purposes are trying to convince themselves that this will actually help them build a brand of themselves and hopefully get a better job. They’re thinking that in order to look professional, they have to get more followers on Twitter, they need to get this blog rolling and start generating comments, they need to use LinkedIn more and make more connections as well as contributing more to the discussions there. They’ve got to be careful to what they post on Facebook and the words they choose because employers do look on Facebook before hiring a candidate. If people use social media for personal use, then they worry about what people will think or say. How long since the last time they updated their status? Have they replied to that girl from high school who sent them a message almost… damn! a week ago, it’s been almost a week and they haven’t replied yet! What is she gonna say? After all, they haven’t talked for 10 years… what if she has to wait an extra week? Did Marc uploaded the pictures from last night yet? He said he would, he’d better do it soon. It’s always more, more and more. Social media, or addiction to social media (it’s a fine line sometimes) creates anxiety. If you don’t believe me, try to do like Robert Doede, a philosophy professor, he suggests to his students to stop using social media for 4 months. That includes: Facebook (obviously), Twitter, youtube, myspace, blogs, msn, and the likes. Are you shivering just at the thought of it? I am! As Mr. Doede says, social media is creating anxiety, anxiety of not being in the know, not being up-to-date, not being able to update your status to let the "world" know what you’re doing at this very moment.

So now here I am, with a social media addiction, and I’m not quite sure how I’m gonna deal with this yet. One thing I know is I can’t keep spending 4 hours a day on social media, because I’m just not effective anymore and I’m sacrificing other part of my life for social media. I’m thinking I could make a list of what I want to accomplish with social media, then develop a strategy and focus on that strategy only. Everything else is a waste of time. I’ll use tools depending of what my priorities are: eg. Twitter for professional use, Facebook for personal use. Then I’ll have to pick a way to limit myself and not spend 4 hours a day on different social media. I’ve thought of 3 ways to do that:

  • Limit based on the time I spend daily on Social Media. That’s probably the easiest way to manage it, but the high quality content is not published equally, meaning that I might run out of time some days while other I’ll have way too much time.
  • Limit based on the websites I use. I could cut everything that I think is not contributing to my top priorities. Cutting out blogs that are not that relevant to my RSS feed would be a good example of this. But obviously, cutting sources of information isn’t the best way to ensure getting the best content online.
  • Limit based on where I am. For example, the bus and the fitness centre are great places to catch up on Social Media. Home and work, not so much. That is attractive because I can make sure I don’t neglect my family, friends and work while still being “in the loop”.

Life needs to be productive and satisfying. Social media can help accomplish this, but learning how to use it properly and more importantly, being more disciplined by keeping track of my priorities are keys. I bet there are many people in the same situation, people who love social media, but are struggling with the time management part. How are you guys coping? What are your secrets for using social media while not going over the top?

 

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