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What is Social Media Marketing?

My skin is tingly. It gets this way whenever something new is on the horizon, something big.

I remember feeling this way back in college. Something called the World Wide Web was creeping onto the scene. It was still in the domain of universities and geeks. Then a roommate told me the Web was going to be commercialized. When I heard that, I looked at the web site I had just built, imagined making a career out of this, and felt my skin go tingly.

The new thing making me tingly is Social Media Marketing (SMM). Okay, maybe it’s not such a new thing. Cutting-edge bloggers have been talking about it for a while now. There was even a conference on it back in April.

But I’m starting to see traditional companies peek into SMM. They’re lifting the curtain, poking their heads in, and wondering if they should join all the fun. In high-tech marketing speak, the Early Adopters are starting to buy into SMM. Maybe even some of the Early Majority too.

So what is Social Media Marketing?

I define it as: a specialization of marketing that involves using online social media channels to promote a business’s products, services, or brand.

So what is Social Media?

Good question. Chris Garrett describes it as the “tools, websites and software that allows people to connect and share.” Scott Monty points to a very amusing video called “Social Media in Plain English” that explains it in, well, plain english:

Can you give me some examples of Social Media Marketing?

Sure. Since this field is still so young, there are a very wide range of tactics, some more effective than others. Here are some examples of SMM tactics:

Create an online video

That video above is a sweet example. It was created by the husband and wife team at CommonCraft Productions. They created a few free videos like that and “Podcasting in Plain English” and “Twitter in Plain English“. These funny videos became viral and spread onto blogs like Scott Monty’s.

The intent? To promote the services of CommonCraft, who’ve created explanation videos for clients such as Google (GOOG), Salesforce.com (CRM), H&R Block (HRB), and others.

Offer a free product/service to a blogger

The book publisher Kogan Page hired a marketing firm to send out free books to various bloggers (including me!) in the hopes that some of the bloggers would write favorable mentions or reviews. This can be tricky as some bloggers may write scathing reviews. I tried to be balanced in mine.

The intent? To generate more sales for Kogan Page’s books.

Get your website listed on a link aggregation site

The link aggregation site Digg.com can be a massive traffic generator. If your website is featured on Digg.com, you can get an onslaught of users visiting your site. A couple of years ago, Richard MacManus found a way to game Digg.com and almost guarantee being featured.

The intent? To get a lot of visitors and new customers. However, the effectiveness of this tactic is debatable, as incoming visitors don’t always convert into customers. It can still give you SEO benefits, though. But be careful about gaming Digg.com, as that can start a community backlash against you.

Create a common-interest group on a social network

Facebook allows you to create common-interest groups, such as the “Louis Vuitton” group or the “Chocolate = Love!” group. You could create one of your own, based around your brand, product, or service, and speak to your customers directly. It’s like an informal, ad hoc focus group, but much cheaper.

The intent? To speak and listen to your customers directly. “It’s like free market research” says one entrepreneur who’s tried this tactic.

Write catchy content

Some call this linkbait, others call this just plain catchy content. Last year, Johnny Virgil wrote a hilarious blog entry about the 1977 JC Penny Catalog he found in his wife’s grandfather’s attic. His entry was so catchy and viral that it spread like a really bad showtune that gets stuck in your head for hours.

The intent? Well, Virgil wasn’t trying to sell anything, though he’s placed Google ads and a PayPal donation button on his site since then. But as a marketer, such a tactic could generate significant pageviews on your site, and hopefully some sales too.

Facebook Marketing Can Help in Unexpected Ways

To the non-web marketers out there: If you have any teenagers in the house, you can bet they’re on Facebook or MySpace (NWS). But did you know that, for the sake of your business, perhaps you should be too?

This past February, Entrepreneur Magazine included a piece about one small business owner’s unexpected findings through Facebook:

After Alicia Rockmore’s Ann Arbor, Michigan-based organizational products company, Buttoned Up Inc. scored shelf space at Target, Rockmore began doing research to keep the big red bull’s-eye happy. A friend invited her to join social networking site Facebook, so she created an individual profile touting her business. She hit pay dirt when she found an existing group of Target customers on Facebook.

“They talk about what they like, what they hear is coming from Target,” says Rockmore, 42. “It’s like free market research.”

That’s my favorite price. Free. Aw yea.

This is part of a new phenomenon called “social media marketing“, where you use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to reach out to current and potential customers. Sites like this aren’t just for teenagers anymore. If used correctly, they can augment the power of word-of-mouth marketing and make your brand louder and stronger.

It’s a tricky new field though. If you come across too corporate and have no personality, or have a truly awful product, it can backfire. Some companies have faced harsh criticism and negative publicity doing this.

That’s why Rockmore’s approach is a safe middle ground. Even though she created a profile to promote her business (which can attract loyal fans as well as competitors and detractors), she didn’t see the value of Facebook until she found a group of consumers similar to the demographic she was trying to reach.

There are hundreds of groups on Facebook. All are formed by motivated people covering any number of topics, hobbies, and interests, such as:

The “Louis Vuitton” group
The “Chocolate = Love!” group
The “interior design lovers” group
The “Black and White Photography” group
The “I judge you when you use poor grammar” group
The “I Don’t Care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like A Dumbass” group (I love this group, hehe)

There’s bound to be a group that fits your target demographic on Facebook. Once you create an account and find a few relevant groups, join them and monitor their discussions for a couple of weeks. Get a feel for the temperament of the participants. You may be able to gleam lots of information just by reading their rants and raves.

When it comes time for more direct information, you can be more proactive and write a message to the group. Ask them for their opinion or suggestions. Be careful not to come across too corporate though, or you might be labeled as working for “The Man.” Also keep in mind basic netiquette, which are a set of informal do’s and don’ts in online communication.

You may be thinking, “That’s great for Rockmore, but my customers don’t use Facebook.” If that’s true, then you’re right, don’t waste your time or brain cells. But if there are potential customers sitting there right now, tweaking their Facebook profiles and complaining about your products, then maybe it’s worth it.

Currently, about 84% of Facebook’s members are between 14 and 26 years of age, according to MarketingHub.info. About 30% of their members have a household income of over $100,000, according to iMedia Connection. There’s some more data on Emergence Media too.

Does that sound like a demographic you want to reach? If so, then perhaps, for the sake of your business, you should get an account. And if you’re not sure how, just ask that teenager of yours.

Kent Brewster’s Clarion Method for Code Reviews

Have a code review coming up? Need to give your peers a thorough review of their code, but are dreading the drudgery of the process? Don’t find the peer review process particularly effective?

There are volumes and volumes written about code review processes, including debates with paired programming and other Agile practices.

Here’s a simple yet powerful alternative. It comes from a former colleague and uber developer: Kent Brewster. As a published author, he’s used the Clarion Method as a process for “critiquing short stories submitted over the course of an intensive six-week ‘boot camp’ for new writers.”

During a team meeting one day, as we hunkered down for a traditional code review, he suggested this alternative. In a nutshell:

Roles

Moderator
Code Reviewee
Code Reviewers (two or more)

Process

Code Reviewee brings printed copies of the code to be reviewed (preferably with a maximum of 10 pages or so). Each participant gets a copy. Each line of code should be numbered.
Code Reviewee provides a high-level summary of the code. This can include the code’s purpose, known bugs, and a brief rationale behind its structure.
Each Code Reviewer reads the code for 5-10 minutes in silence. They can make notes on the copies as necessary. The Moderator keeps track of the time.
Each Code Reviewer takes a 3 minute turn delivering their review. No more than 3 minutes should be spent, as each turn is meant to be quick. If someone else mentions an issue you wanted to raise, just say “ditto on xxx” instead of repeating it.
While the Code Reviewers speak, the Code Reviewee must remain silent. No rebuttals, no explanations, no excuses. Just shut up and sit there. There will be a chance to speak up later.
After the reviews, the Code Reviewee now has a chance to speak. This opportunity should be used to ask questions and clarify what issues the Reviewers saw. Both sides can converse and debate freely now.

Exceptions

If the code requires execution to be properly reviewed, each participant can bring a laptop along. The Code Reviewee should provide a location where the code can be seen an executed.
If the code is very lengthy, select just one section to be reviewed. Other sections can be reviewed at future sessions.
If a Code Reviewer offers incorrect advice, raise it at the end so the Reviewer can learn from this session as well.

Kent has a more detailed explanation of this process on his site.

If done well, this process allows everyone to have a chance to voice their opinions about the code, regardless of their skill level. Code Reviewees and Reviewers alike can learn a lot from these sessions. I’ve even found that developers from across multiple teams can join in without requiring a lot of background information.

Even more telling is that many developers really look forward to their code reviews. This process forms such a supportive, non-threatening, and educational environment that developers know they’ll always learn something new from a code review. That, to me, is a mark of a truly effective process.

CNBC’s 2008 Portfolio Challenge: How to Win

$CNBC\'s 2008 Portfolio Challenge$ I like to win. Blame it on my competitive nature, the euphoria of winning, or the adrenalin of success. In any case, I like to win.

So when Bill Barker wrote “How to Win CNBC’s Million-Dollar Portfolio Challenge“, my ears perked like a cat hearing a can opener. (Meeeow!) Here’s what Barker suggests:

Use all five portfolios.
Maintain a super-concentrated portfolio.
Size matters, so go small.
Focus on earnings announcements.
Look at companies trading at or near 52-week lows.
Celebrate low-priced stocks.
Look for shorts; they are great candidates for quick upward moves.
Invest in possible mergers, as they could offer a quick pop.
Biotech stocks frequently populate the top performers of the day.
Simply have fun.

Good advice there. I’ve already used some of it. He also suggests these stocks, which more or less fit the criteria he’s outlined:

Let’s see how on-the-money his advice will be. And good luck everyone!

Web Surfers Don’t Read Very Much

You know this already. Most people don’t read website text very closely. According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, they just scan the text.

Well, Nielsen’s team just provided further proof of this with an eyetracking study. They’ve also shown that web surfers only read about 20% of the text.

I’d say more, but you probably won’t read it.

The SEO Rapping Poetic Prophet

Now for some Friday fun. If you work in the web industry and do web design, web development, SEO, affiliate marketing, and/or web standards, you’ve seen this by now. (If not, where have you been?)

Who’s behind this rhyme? Charles (Chuck) Lewis, the Houston, TX guy who’s background is as varied as a spin of the roulette wheel. He’s been rapping since his early teen years at his local church. His style of gospel rap earned him the moniker the Poetic Prophet. After a few false starts, he started a record label called Mo Serious Entertainment to promote himself and some other acts.

Somewhere along the line, he became a Project Coordinator/Marketing Specialist for Pop Labs, where, I’m guessing, he learned about the complicated world of search engines, web standards, and ever-changing web browsers.

One day, inspiration struck him, and he began applying his rapping skills to his new trade. He recorded a handful of YouTube videos that became viral. And now, he’s being mentioned on Valleywag, Compiler from Wired.com, and ShoeMoney.

Looks like his SEO rap has been great for his SEO.

Online Competitive Analysis Services

Not knowing your competition is like not knowing who you’re fighting in World of Warcraft. Is it Alliance? Horde? Night Elves? Blood Elves? Goblins? Oh my!

When analyzing your competition, you’re assessing their strengths and weakness. Your analysis should include direct and indirect competitors as well; any alternate method of solving the same problem your product or service solves is a competitor, even if it’s not a formal business entity. Online Marketing Software and Marketing Experiments Journal both have nice primers on doing competitive analyzes.

For web-based businesses, there a fair number of online competitive analysis services out there. Some are free, some require subscriptions. Here are a bunch that I’ve come across.

Free Online Competitive Analysis Services

One of the more popular services out there, Alexa ranks websites against each other based on traffic. Additionally, it provides data on rank trends (up or down), download speed, reach, page views per user, visitor origins, related links, and in some cases, business information like number of employees, annual revenue, and business contacts.

Alexa gathers its data from users who’ve downloaded the Alexa Toolbar. There is some controversy over this method as some websites have gamed Alexa’s rankings in the past. Also, it only provides this data at the domain name level; data for sub-domains and directories not offered.

For a general idea of popularity trends, this can be a useful service. Just give the Alexa ranks some margin of error.

Compete is also a traffic ranking service like Alexa, though it offers slightly different data. It aims to provide the number of unique visitors to a website, in addition to time spent, pages per visit, and top search keywords driving traffic to the website. Compete also makes it very easy to compare several sites at once.

Compete gathers its data by recruiting users, much like Nielsen Ratings did for US television viewers. These users come from the Compete Toolbar, ISPs, and opt-in panels. Its number of unique visitors metric isn’t accurate, it’s an approximation; use your traffic analysis tools for a more accurate number. Also, Compete only provides data for US users; non-US users are not counted.

Like Alexa, Compete can be useful for general popularity trends and comparisons.

One of the newer traffic ranking services on the block, Quantcast also provides demographics data, such as gender, age, household income, ethnicity, head of household education, and children in household. This data is all from US users only.

Quantcast gathers its data through research panels (essentially, anonymous surveys) and beacon tracking on websites which need to be installed by website owners themselves. Their demographic data is obtained from their research panels, which they acknowledge isn’t entirely accurate.

Like all online traffic ranking services, Quantcast can be useful for general demographic information, but assume some margin of error.

Competitious is a new offering that aggregates the data from traffic ranking services into one location. So far, it only pulls ranking data from Alexa. It also provides a way to compare features across competitors and store news clippings. Your analyzes are saved as “projects” and multiple people can be added to a project.

Although its offerings aren’t very comprehensive yet, Competitious has a lot of potential for being a hub for your online competitive analyzes. I’m anxious to see what features they add next.

Not really a full-fledged service, SearchStatus is an extension for the Firefox web browser. It provides a quick snapshot of any website’s Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete Rank. There are also a lot of other features, such as showing nofollow links, number of links, meta tags, a whois report, the robots.txt file, keyword density, back links, pages indexed in popular search engines, and other SEO-relevant information.

All of this data is freely available. This extension simply aggregates all of it onto your web browser. It’s an extremely handy tool and very popular among SEO specialists.

Paid Online Competitive Analysis Services

One of the most widely-cited sources, comScore is the Nielsen Ratings of the Internet. It provides traffic rank data in addition to typical marketing metrics such as engagement, reach, frequency, demographics, and daypart reporting. Many journalists and bloggers use comScore’s numbers as a gauge of market share.

comScore gathers its data from users who’ve opted in and downloaded their usage tracking software. Since self-selected populations can be biased, comScore adjusts the data using weights to make sure that different demographics are adequately represented.

comScore is fairly expensive and probably out of reach for most small-to-medium sized businesses. The free traffic ranking services like Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast can provide adequate competitive data for now.

Andiamo Systems is a new service that aims to provide a measurement of a business’s word-of-mouth reach. It does this by collecting mentions from blogs, forums, review sites, message boards, PR newswires, news, and other web sites. A lot of your customers could be sharing their opinions about your products & services online right now, good or bad. This service acts like a targeted search engine to aggregate all of those opinions for you.

Pricing is set on a monthly basis and increases as you get more mentions, starting at $79 for up to 50 mentions. This scale makes Andiamo more affordable for small businesses. A 14-day free trial is offered.

Not every mention out there is equally important, but this new service could provide an effective way to monitor a tiny negative word before it explodes into a PR nightmare.

Watch360 is a new service that keeps an eye on your competitors’ websites and reports every little change they make. It’s a way to monitor announcements and new product offerings from your competitors on a daily basis.

Pricing is on a monthly or yearly basis and increases as you monitor more companies, starting at $29.95/month for 10 companies. The top pricing tier, $99.95/month, allows you to monitor an unlimited amount of companies. A free trial report is offered for one company.

Assuming that your competitors update their website and blog regularly, this new service could give you the information you need to react to their moves.

Ever use any of these free or paid services? If so, what did you think? And do you know of any others that are also good?