Itai Boublil

I love the way Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, is promoting her country. Her latest video offers a swapping contest that is absolutely  genius. The concept is quite simple: “2 people from Jordan will swap locations with 2 tourists for 1 week. How? Well, if you’ve never been to Jordan, we’ll pay for you and a friend to come and visit the country. If you live in Jordan, we’ll swap you and a friend (temporarily!) with the other winners and take you on a tour of their country. It’s cross-cultural dialogue with air miles!”

This is where the genius (for a marketing geek such as myself) part lies: it is all pure social media approach!

These are the rules: upload a video to TwitVid saying why you’d like to visit Jordan, and post it with @queenrania #TwisitJordan. If you live in Jordan, tell Queen Rania why you love your country, again with @queenrania #TwisitJordan.

Once the contest is over, four videos will be chosen, and two people from abroad will be swapped with two people from Jordan with full expenses paid by the Kingdom (talk about an incentive! full expenses paid!).

What I like the most about this initiative (beside the fully paid trip of course) is the way Queen Rania is using Social Medial to promote the contest. She is using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flicker, her website, and Twitvid to reach every corner of the social media sphere. Now that is a smart marketing approach! Kudos!

What do you think? Do you see yourself posting a video to win a free trip to Jordan?

You can watch her video below

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?

The social media marketing platform I worked on for past three days is finally done. This post is mainly about my thoughts during the “building” process, a diary if you will of what I have done.

I spent an average of 12 hours a day working, thinking, developing and creating the SMM platform, and I really enjoyed every minute of it. The biggest challenge, in my opinion, one faces when creating such a platform is with the choices Social Media has to offer. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Social Media tools one can choose from, and the trick is to pick the right tools for your audience. It is very tempting to start with as many social media accounts as you can possibly think of, accounts such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, and FriendFeed to name a few, but the question in mind is, do you really need it? Or, more importantly, can your audience be found in these channels?

I guess it really depends with the type of SMM platform you are trying to build. If you are doing something on a small scale, you are probably good with just 2-3 tools. However, if you are trying to target a large audience that is scattered over 7 continents, then you might want to think of a more strategic approach to SMM.

My experience was with the first option, the small scale option. I was trying to create a SMM platform to an audience that  A) I already know, b) is a “fixed” audience that shows up to the fitness center every day, C) part of generation Y, and D) is “hungry” and “thirsty” for a Social Media interaction.

We this information in mind, these are the channels I created:

Facebook Page

Blog Page (the main page is up, but the Blog is not operative yet)

Twitter

Part of the reason it took so many hours to create is because I needed to link and optimize all these accounts. In other words, I needed to have a synergy between these accounts.

Creating a SMM platform is a relatively easy, but tedious, task. Operating and strategizing your marketing decisions is where the magic lies.

Have you ever created a SMM platform? Do you mind sharing your experience in the comments section?

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