Itai Boublil

Generation Millennial

In a survey conducted by Pew Internet and American Project Life about the future impact of the internet, a solid majority of experts said  that “the Millennial generation will lead society into a new world of personal disclosure and information-sharing using new media”.

From a marketing perspective, the data presented is good news to any Inbound marketer. At the rate of which generation Y is using social media, it is easy to see how it will be more reseptive to online interaction than traditional marketing (TV ads, radio commercial, billboards, etc).

The marketing take:

Companies who use traditional marketing to deliver (read: push) their messages will need to reassess their marketing approach, and learn how to effectively communicate online. It is no wonder we see more and more companies embracing social media and inbound marketing tactics to better engage their audience.

Where do you stand on the subject?

Pew-Internet And American Project Survey

Impersonal Customer Relationship

Smart marketers have long realized that choosing an Inbound Marketing and Social Media Marketing (SMM) approaches over a Traditional Marketing  approach, yields more leads and sales to their business.

It is also understood that pursuing this type of approach, especially in SMM, entails a change in the way marketers ought to think and act. One of these changes, not surprisingly, is in the way companies interact with their customers. For instance, instead of referring your customer as “Dear Cardmember, you can simply refer them by their first name, in this case “Mr. Itai Boublil”.

There is an example of an email I received today from Chase Bank:

“Dear Cardmember,

If you recently received an e-mail notice titled “…..” it was in reference to a secure message we sent to you in December.You may disregard the e-mail notice, because you should’ve received it at the same time we sent you the secure message…..We apologize for the confusion. Please reply to this message if you have any questions or concerns.Thank you for being a valued Chase customer.

Sincerely,

Cardmember Services”

This is what I like to call Impersonal Customers Relationship (ICR). From an Inbound Marketing perspective, I find Chase’s email to be impersonal. If you are going to send me an email, a personal email no less, you should know that my name is not “Cardmember”. Also, I would appreciate if the “person” who sent me the email had a name ( last time I checked Cardmember Services was not a name).

This is only one change a company can enforce to improve their interaction with their assets (clients), and make it more personal. Make your clients feel as if they are more than just small bolts in a big money making machine.

Have you ever had this type of experience?

2010 Prediction

It will be presumptuous of me to attempt and predict what 2010 will look like to Social Media Marketers, developers, and ordinary Social Media users such as my wife. When looking at how rapidly the year 2009 changed the way Marketers engaged their customers, and the way Social Media Marketing literally changed everyone’s lives, I think any type of prediction can not be summarized in one Blog post. In fact, judging by what I saw and read during 2009, it will be almost impossible to even sum it in a book.

With that in mind, I do want to share my 6 ideas of what we might see during 2010.

1. Online Purchasing: We will have an iPhone and Nexus One with a built in Credit Card device. We will be able to purchase online with our cell phone by simply swiping our credit card through a device that is built in our phones and laptops. no more typing your credit card number when purchasing online.
2. Apple/Google: These two companies will be the prominent leaders of the: cell phones industry; social media; computers software; software design; computer designs.
3. Cell Phone Companies: Apple and Google will dominate the cell phones industry. I predict that at least one company will either terminate its operations, or, alternatively, will change their role in this industry (i.e. will focus on merging with either Apple or Google [most likely Google] to help develop their phones.).
4. Social Media Marketing (SMM): SMM will become a trend among ALL large and small businesses. I predict that 2010 will be the year of SMM. In fact, SMM will be bigger than what SEO was in 2009. My theory is that Google is changing its “face” to a more Social Media “look” than Search Engine “look” , mainly because they predict the same.
5. Content: As more and more information is changing rapidly by the day (literally), reading will become a less convenient way to process all this amass information. I predict that in 2010 we will see more Videos as a way to deliver insightful content. Reading will still be a major part of receiving information, but it will be shorter, and will be accompanied by a short (60-90 seconds) video to illustrate the blogger’s idea.
6. Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin will further change the “face” of Social Media. I predict that Twitter in particular will emerge as a combination of Facebook and LinkedIn combined together. This is by far the most daring and presumptuous prediction on my part, but I thought of giving it a try.

These are my 6 predictions. What do you think? Do you predict the same? Do you think I am wrong? Or, maybe you want to add something of your own?

Share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Happy New Year!

Our Bird House

I was watching the New England Patriots game today (broke my heart again), and suddenly I was interrupted by a single tweet sound coming behind me. A bird (a cardinal to be specific) has just landed on our bird house, and was enjoying the wonderful sunflower seeds I filled the day before. Soon after, another tweet, and then another tweet, and 5 minutes into this saga I had a handful of colorful birds enjoying a delicious meal on our bird house.

Hmm, I thought to myself, how interesting. Real life tweets, my mind was thinking, are very much similar to Tweets we marketers “tweet” on Twitter. One bird came to the bird house, and tweeted something that has a value to other birds (in this case, food), soon after another bird showed up and Re-tweeted (RT) the message to another bird of her kind, and before I knew it they were all tweeting a symphony of tweets, which I can only guess meant “hey there is food”.

This is the lesson I take from this insightful experience: If you want your tweets to be Re-tweeted, you need to tweet something that has value to your followers. Just like in the case provided, one bird tweeted, and soon after others followed and Re-tweeted the same message: “Food”.

I found it interesting how similar this case is to real life.

Picture: Our bird house.

Inbound Marketing University

I really enjoyed yesterday’s IMU Advance Marketing Analytics class. Professor Avinash Kaushik gave an outstanding lecture of how to use Google analytics to measure your website’s success, and a great explanation of what to do if your website does not “take off” as you expected.

There was one part during the lecture, however, that made me disagree with what professor Kaushik said about Bounce Rate.

According to professor Kaushik, a high level of bounce rate means that the reader who visited your website and left after seconds, and I quote, translates to this: “I came, I puke, I left”. In other words, I visited your website for less than a second, did not like what I saw, or see, and left.

My perception in life is that every problem has more colors to it than just black and white. Professor Kaushik’s statement made me think that maybe we are not seeing the colors, and there must be more to it than just a reader not liking your website, or content.

After thinking about it all night long, I finally managed to see the “colors”.

The Black and White analysis (according to professor Kaushik):

• Yes, your website sucks. It has poor design, lots of advertising, and the layout is very confusing to the eye to the point that you can not even find the content.
• Your content sucks. You write about how you like to scratch your back with a fork, and check your emails in the afternoon (no one really cares about your stuff).

The “Colors” analysis:

Your website is a Blog, and you do not publish on an hourly basis, like other blogs. This is very important, and I will use an example to illustrate my point.

Let’s say you have a group of devoted readers that like what you write, and return to your site every two days, or every day even, to check if you publish a new article.

Let’s also say that your strategy is to publish an article every 5 days, since you are a single writer on your blog, and it is very hard to come up with creative content on a daily basis.

As you can imagine, the readers who enter your website on a daily basis see the same article over and over again for 5 days (until you publish a new article), and thus do not stay more than a second on your blog page (because they already read the article 2 days ago). This, as you have already concluded, causes a high Bounce Rate that has nothing to do with the creativity of your content, or the design of your website (it is not about design anyway, it is about content).

Professor Kaushik is brilliant with what he does, and in fact I highly recommend anyone who wants to learn analytics to purchase both (1, 2) of his books that cover this topic profoundly.

The point I was trying to illustrate is that every problem (in this case Bounce Rate) has more colors to it than black and white.

To all the IMU students, do you agree or disagree with this argument? Comment and let me know.

Get the tips to Blog

A friend of mine decided to start her own Blog writing  about food, recipes, and different type of cuisines. Being an Inbound Marketer, I thought it was a great idea and encouraged her to do so. However, during our conversation she raised a few questions about what to do, and what tips she needs to keep in mind before starting a blog. Mary Beth, this is for you.

The following are few tips about starting your own Blog:

• Get your own URL: It is not expansive to do, and it is worth the effort. It is true that WordPress, Typepad, and Bloggerare free services that anyone can use, but having your own URL is unique and in my opinion shows more authority. Also, having your own URL is easier to promote, as opposed to www.yourcompany.wordpress.com for example.

• Have a Blog strategy: with no strategy your Blog is just another Blog. What are you writing about? Is it a personal Blog, is it a professional Blog? What ever it is, make sure to follow your strategy, and do not confuse your readers. You need to be consistent with what you have to say. For example, if you decide to focus on food, do not start writing about TV shows, it will only confuse your readers, forcing them to abandon your blog.

• Do not spend too much time on perfecting your Theme: Many bloggers (I am guilty of thinking this way in the past as well) spend too much time changing and choosing the “right” theme for their Blog. My advice to you is, do NOT spend too much time fixing and changing your theme. Your readers are interested in your content, and not in how your Blog/website looks. Instead try to focus on creative writing, which brings me to my next point.

• Focus on Content: Content is king! This is one phrase you will here over and over again among Inbound Marketers. It takes some practice and a few posts to develop your creativity for writing good content, but do not let it stop you. Always ask yourself this: would I have liked reading this? If the answer is yes, then you are probably already on the right track to becoming a good blogger.

• Allow Comments, Subscription, and RSS: Inbound Marketing is about creating relationship, and communicating back with your customers. Your Blog is not a business (yet), but you do have  customers and these are your readers. You will be surprised to discover how many people read your Blog, and share their thoughts with you by commenting on what you have to say. One word of advice, give it some time to happen. It takes time before your readers develop “faith” in your content, and feel confident enough to connect with you.

• Ask someone to help: There are many things you can and need to do with a new Blog or a website. There are professionals out there that their job is to help you with SEO, SEM and SMM. Some of these professionals can be one of your closest friends (like me), or could be a friend who knows someone who is an Inbound Marketer. Do not be afraid to communicate your questions. Most of the advices you will get are totally free, and most Inbound Marketers are always willing to help.

• Have a SMM Strategy: You need to be thinking about ways to promote your Blog. There are over 100 millions Blogs out there, and with out a good SMM strategy plan your blog could and will get lost. Focus on promoting your Blog through different Social Media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and  Facebook(to name a few) to push your Blog forward. One word of advice: do not “push” your content too aggressively, and by that I mean do not tweet or share your latest blog entry 10 or 20 times on Twitter or  Facebook  in one day. This will only annoy people. Once or twice on the day you publish your post is fine, just make sure you Share it, or Tweet it on times that people are still awake (i.e. high traffic on Twitter, for example).

In sum, having your own website and Blog could be a great way to share your passion  with others from around the globe. Always make sure you are passionate about your topic, and focus on creating remarkable content, it is 70% of your success.

I encourage you to comment and share your own experience with Blogging, or alternatively ask some of the questions that you might have.

Are you social enough?

I attended a talk today at Princeton University titled “Blogs, Lulz, and Tweets: Social Media Comes to Princeton“. This is a summary of what I liked and did not like or disagreed with during talk.

Liked:

I liked the fact that Princeton University is aware of the power of Social Media Marketing,  trying to promote it to all departments, and encourage people to take some action in reaching out to students, faculty and staff.

Unfortunately, this is where the Like part ends. The next paragraphs are a summary of what I think Princeton University is doing wrong with its approach to Social Media Marketing.

Did not like, or disagreed:

The ” ” marks are some of the things that were said during the talk, and what I thought was wrong with this type of approach to Social Media Marketing:

• “Everyone should start a Blog, it is easy to do”: This is the wrong advise to give someone with out explaining what a Blog Strategy is, and what a Content strategy is. So you start a Blog, and now what? How do you promote it? what do you write about? What voice would you use? Who are your audiences (students, professors, lecturers, people on the street)? These are very important questions that needed to be covered.
• “Have as many followers as possible, be proud of it“: Princeton University (@Princeton) is following 26 people (I am sure that some of it are other Universities), and has 3394 followers. I will say it again, it is called SOCIAL Media Marketing, NOT Media Marketing. The idea is to be social, and by that I mean follow back and listen to what your audience has to say to you.
• “Facebook (F.B) pages are like websites”: F.B pages are your way to promote your product/service/message/team/etc. These pages are not the company’s website. F.B is a social network, and when you start a F.B page you want to be social.  You also need to have a strategy of how to promote your F.B page, and more importantly, how are you going to use it? What purpose does it have in your department? Are you trying to promote a specific event? Are you trying to promote a blog post? What is your goal?

These are 2  questions that I did not think received the correct answers:

1. Q: What if I only want to have a F.B page, but I do not want any fans on it? Answer: you can do it if you want. The right answer: What? How can you say such a thing? I will say it again, it is about being SOCIAL. If you can not be Social, do not use social media marketing for your organization.
2. Q: I have enough spam, do I really want to add more Spam to my mail? Answer: it is not really spam, some of it is good.  The right Answer is: SMM is about asking your permission to take action. If you do not want it, you do not have to subscribe to anything. We ask, and you decide if you want it.

A part of me wanted to stand up and answer all these questions, but unfortunately I had to leave to work. All of these questions are common among new users of Social Media Marketing, and as a marketer I believe we ought to have the right answers at the right time.  This is the first “talk” in a series of 7 or so events. I hope to deliver my message to the audience on the next talk. Who knows, maybe I can offer my services to the Princeton University Social Media Marketing Task Force (this is the official name) to help them understand Social Media Marketing a little better.

Last week I engaged in a marketing conversation with one of my colleagues discussing “links” on your website.

It was totally a random conversation, but nonetheless a very interesting one, which inspired me to summarize the conversation to a blog post.

So these are the points you need to know about “links”:

1. You need to have a “links” philosophy:

The best links are always contextually relevant to your visitors (Not SEO as most people think). Those are the links you want, because they drive qualified traffic to your site. This should be your linking philosophy! I know it sounds a bit crazy, but you should really forget about SEO when thinking about “links”, and focus on your visitors. In other words, you want the “links” that drive the highest number qualified visitors to your site, so that you can convert them.

1. Think Visitors before you think SEO:

First and foremost, links drive visitors to your site. These visitors come to your website because they followed the links on a different website.

The question remained is, how do you drive the most conversions from visitors who follow links? Simple, you do so by searching for sites that can deliver the most qualified visitors to yours.

Sites such as:

• Sites with lots of traffic: Links on a site with heavy traffic will drive a lot more visitors than an unpopular site.

• Sites related to yours: remember that you are looking for qualified traffic, not just any traffic. If you have a marketing blog, it will do you no good if you link your blog to a fitness blog.  

• Sites with less competition: Yes I know, it does not make sense but keep reading. It can be better to attract an inbound link from a low traffic page where you are 1 of 5 links than a high traffic page with 200 links. Personally, I would rather be in the  1-5 links ratio, than 1-200 links ratio

1. Types of links:

To save some reading time, I decided to link (some of) the following to other websites that probably will explain it better than me trying to write it. If I did not link it, and you want to know more, just send me an email, or leave a comment. I will be happy to elaborate:

Internal links; Relational links; Solicited links; paid links.

I am sure there is more to links than what I just wrote, so I encourage you to add comments if you feel I missed something.

My colleague and I thought it was what we call “introduction to Links building”. Hmmm, this could be a great topic for an IMU class.

Marketing 2.0 is a meticulous work of an author who took the extra mile to explain the dynamics of Social Media Marketing, and give a thorough analysis of what works and what does not work in Social Media today.

In contrast to other books in the Social Media Marketing field, Marketing 2.0 relies heavily on using case studies of various companies. In addition to these case studies, the author himself added  some of his own experience, which really helped with reinforcing what was discussed in the beginning of each chapter in the book.

I particularly appreciated the fact that Mr. Borges took the effort to divide all the “tools” available in Social Media into individual chapters, instead of congesting them into one or two chapters like other authors do in order to save time (I guess). This is extremely helpful, especially if you are planning to use the book as a textbook, which is not a bad idea at all.

If you have been around the Social Media”neighborhood” for some time, you might find some of the chapters to be a fundamental knowledge. However, I caution you not to flip the pages, as I am sure you will find some of this fundamental knowledge to be useful, especially combined with Bernie’s self experience case studies.

If you have never experienced Social Media Marketing before, or, alternatively, experienced it but feel like you need to learn more, this book is for you.

You can follow this link if you wish to purchase the book.

Feel free to share your experience with the book by commenting

Is Social Media Generation turning into Generation Greed?

I noticed an interesting phenomenon this pass month that I can not say I relate myself to. It took place a couple of times when Twitter and Gmail were under Denial of Service Attack, and had to shut down their services.

The two companies that we learned to rely on their free services over the years became in a matter of seconds the most disappointing services on the web-sphere.

TechCrunch were the first to announce that both services were down, and you could instantly watch the negative comments starting to accumulate by ungrateful users.

I thought to myself, here we have two great companies that provide two great services for absolutely free, and these users have the audacity to complain?

Have we become so greedy, that we demand more even though what we have is more than we ever wished in such short period of time? Sure, we can always wish for more, but are we really in a position to complain about a service we did not even pay to use?

Personally, I think the Social Media Generation has been damaged by decades of traditional ‘guerrilla’ marketing, that it can no longer distinguish between good service and bad service. We have learned to resent the old days, the days that big corporations would abuse their power to say to us “because we can”. As this new social media industry evolves, we as users need to embrace it, and appreciate the free tools it provides us.

From a Social Media Marketer perspective, this put us (the marketers) in a very tough position. On the one hand, we constantly are thinking how to create remarkable services that will bridge the gap between us and our customers. On the other hand, we have created a generation of users that will turn their back on us when ever we do wrong.

Coming back to my question, is SM generation turning into generation Greed? Unfortunately it is embedded in our genes as human to be greedy, so in that sense the answer is yes. However, I do think that if marketers will keep focusing on building genuine relationships with customers, we might be able to see some more tolerance and understanding when incidents such as Denial of Service Attack take place.

Share you comments, I am curious to read what you have to say.

One of the reasons I love Inbound Marketing is because of its ability to reach a massive amount of users in a matter of seconds. This could be a great tool if you know your ways in Inbound Marketing ‘land’. It can also be a damaging tool to a brand if their customers know how to use a few simple tools, such as Twitter, to create some social waves.

Let me illustrate it by sharing with you a story that happened yesterday.

Last week we started having problems with our Internet connection. At first it started during the night time, around 8pm, and remained disconnected for 5-6 hours. Then, during this last weekend, we started getting disconnected in the morning time (and night time), sometimes for hours.

At this stage of the problem we decided to call Comcast, who provides the service to our house. We spent a good 20 minutes on the phone trying to explain the problem, and at the end of this phone call the operator suggested to send a technician. The technician arrived to our house, and said to us that the problem is too complicated for him to repair, and it actually a problem that requires Comcast to send an engineer to fix. As we were talking with the technician outside the house, we came to learn that a few of our neighbors have a similar problem with their Internet. At this point the technician suggested to call the company to  keep reporting about the problem, and eventually they will send an engineer to examine the problem (“only if you have enough complaints”, he said).

This is the point I decided to use the social media marketing skills I have to create some ‘social wave’, or, if you will, shake Comcast’s brand a little by creating enough damaging “buzz” to push it fix my Internet problem a little faster. .

I chose the fastest and most powerful tool I have in my Inbound Marketing tool box, Twitter. This is what I tweeted:

• I can’t believe it, 7days in a row & no Internet in morning or night! @comcast sucks! That’s it, I had enough of this BS, switching 2day6:26 AM Aug 31st from TweetDeck

• danronken@ItaiBoublil Dude, that’s crazy. Seven day in a row w no internet service due to comast? Do you have other broadband options where you live?6:29 AM Aug 31st from HootSuite in reply to ItaiBoublil

• U bet I have other options @danronken Welcome to America @comcast , your competitor is begging 2 have my business, and they will!6:36 AM Aug 31st from HootSuite

‘ alt=ComcastBill>

• ComcastBill@ItaiBoublil whats going on can i help7:15 AM Aug 31st from web in reply to ItaiBoublil

• @ComcastBill The tech guy was here on Thur, said everything is fine. He said that entire street is down, and what we need is an engineer.9:15 AM Aug 31st from HootSuite in reply to ComcastBill

• ComcastBill@ItaiBoublil will see whats up9:21 AM Aug 31st from web in reply to ItaiBoublil

This is more or less the entire social media conversation I exchanged with @ComcastBill. It lasted about 6-7 Tweets, and resolved by Comcast sending an engineer on the same day!

Fortunately for Comcast they realized the power of Inbound Marketing. In contrast to Comcast, other companies, unfortunately, are still struggling to accept the fact that the rules of customer service have changed, and the customer now has the power to strengthen, damage , or destroy their brand.

Share your own experience by commenting.

As part of my effort to explain people the power of SMM, SEM, and SEO, I come across some interesting discussions and opinions that I thought would be interesting of sharing with you.

One of these discussions occurred yesterday, when I conversed with a client of mine about how to engage his students using online tools. He has recently learnt that the college he teaches at will soon offer online classes to its students, and his concern was that he will no longer be able to interact with his students while lecturing (i.e. taking and answering questions).

Puzzled from this statement, I asked him if he has ever heard of what a webinar is. He responded by telling me that he might have heard of it, but never took interest.

I explained to him the simple process of creating a webinar, and at the end he asked me about what to do if students want to ask questions. I gave him the options of Twitter, Chatting, Forums, and other SMM tools that he can use, and explained to him that all he will need is a computer, and his notes.

Why am I writing this? Well, after conversing with many clients, colleagues, and friends, I realized that Inbound Marketing is far from its full potential. Furthermore, there is a big misconception of what various SMM tools are, and how SEO is not what it used to be 4 or 5 years ago (i.e. it is not just about keywords anymore).  What seems obvious to me as a social media marketing strategist is completely alien to someone else.

I find the most challenging aspect of promoting an Inbound Marketing Plan is the vast effort it takes to explain executive level personnel what seems to be the big pink elephant in the room. The way I see it is quite simple:

1)      you have the opportunity as a CEO to bridge the gap between your company and your customers.

2)      It gives you an opportunity to create an honest relationship with your clients, which is something you can not do by placing big billboard ads on buildings, or blasting your customers with TV commercial ads while they watch a movie.

3)      You will attract more visitors, create more leads, and nurture more leads better than any other marketing 1.0 technique you choose to use.

4)      It saves you money!

Ironically, bullet number 4 is the least important when creating an Inbound Marketing strategy. Yes, I agree that money is a good incentive, but it is also a given ‘obvious’ when creating an Inbound Marketing plan. Why? Because most of the SMM and SEO tools are absolutely free (for now), and if you hire a good SMM strategist you can rest assure that he or she will probably keep it this way for a long time. .

Of course, if you are a small to mid size business, you can always invest in one of HubSpot marketing kits, or SEOmoz SEO innovative solutions, but it will only be a fraction of what you will pay if you were using a Marketing 1.0 strategy.

Inbound Marketing has come a long way in the pass 5 years. Books have been published, Webinars were launched, Inbound Marketing companies were created, and there is even an Inbound Marketing University out there that spreading the knowledge of Inbound Marketing for free.

With all of this wonderful infrastructure in place, I still see a gap between corporations, and SMM. It is almost as if the corporate world (on its different levels) refuses to accept the change, or even more alerting, afraid to adapt to the new rules of marketing.

With all this said, I find it the most exciting era to work as a SMM Strategist.

Share your comments if you have one.

“All I do is work here“. I did not come up with this title. I came across it this morning while reading some of my favorite blogs. I am sure that after you read this blog post you will probably think the same way I think now, which is something on the line of “oh, I have heard that before”.

I stopped counting how many time I came across this annoying answer of “all I do is work here”, and how many times it made me lose respect to the person who said it, and to the organization as a whole. Personally for me it shows incompetency, but this is just me.

Seth is a genius when it comes to using these examples and analogies, and this blog post is no exception.

Read, instill in you, and make sure never to use this phrase again.