Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

for too many Tweets in an hour. I feel bitch-slapped.

I’m live tweeting searchfest 09 #sf09 over on Twitter. It’s a good conference so far… if you want to hear panel presentations, check it out: http://twitter.com/janetleejohnson…

If you’ve got a heartbeat and are looking to improve your business results in “today’s economic climate,” it’s likely you’re looking into social media these days. In the years I’ve been consulting and participating in social media, there’s never ever been more interest in the space, which is delightful to me.

But the reasons you should (or shouldn’t) try Twitter or Facebook or (insert the latest social media darling here) are often unclear - until you begin answering questions about your brand.

Amplifying Conversations Online

Social media are blogs, podcasts, videos, and news that enable people to participate with your brand by commenting, rating products (think Amazon) or statements (”like” is the new Black), by uploading files (think YouTube, Flickr).

As my esteemed colleague Dawn Foster notes:

“Social media is generated by the people and for the people with content created by anyone with a voice (average Joes, village idiots, respected journalists, CxOs, etc.).”

The important thing to note is that each of those groups are out in force online with loud, amplified voices. Putting your brand in their hands is exactly what you’re looking at when you’re looking at social media.

When people ask me for an overview of social media channels they might consider, I always start with the caveat that it will depend on their prospects and customers, and where they hang out. And then I’ll talk about specific types:

• LinkedIN is on the business-centric end of the scale of social media sites. Traditionally it’s been used for recruitment, hiring and general networking; but there’s a growing use of LinkedIN Answers that allows participants to develop thought leadership for their products, services and brands inside of LinkedIN.
• Business blogs are becoming more popular, with even the most regulated companies like banks and healthcare organizations entering the blogosphere - too often, these blogs are treated as extensions of the PR department’s mouthpiece, so fall flat in their potential to drive thought leadership and compel conversations about a market. Consumer trust of corporate blogs is dropping as a result.
• Facebook’s use by brands is growing quickly, as are the aging population demographics. Many large brands are exploring Facebook Pages and Groups where users can post their own content in support of their favorite products, groups, even cities.
• YouTube is arguably the most viewed social network. The #1 activity of people who are active in social networks is to watch videos online, according to Universal-McCann. More than 100M people watched videos on YouTube in October, 2008. The average visitor watched 92 videos in the month. Much of that activity was driven by the election, but the power of the medium to attract viewers is indisputable.
• Twitter, the popular microblogging site, has grown more than 750% in the past year, with 5K - 10K users joining every day. Twitter is oft used by customer service folks to make sure user experiences are good, and is a source of immediate hits of a brand’s online reputations - whether they’re good/bad/ugly. But with everyone jumping on the bandwagon (heck, you’ll even find John McCain Twittering - albeit “slowly”), it’s only a matter of time before the digerati leave it in droves.

When Social Media is Good:

1. Brand awareness - Skittles recently turned over their corporate web site to feeds from their Facebook page (with more than half a million fans) and Twitter (where they quickly found the dark side of social media - some people posted bad/nasty stuff just to be seen on the Skittles.com site. Remember Dawn’s ‘village idiots?’) But they got HUGE press as a result. Regardless of the adeptness of intention, awareness is one result.
2. Brand engagement - letting users interact with your brand is a great opportunity for your company to learn from your users and advocates - in areas like product development (asking questions about what customers would like to see in future products, etc.), research and stimulating awareness among their peers.
3. Thought leadership - when surgeons at Henry Ford hospital in Mass. Tweeted a surgery live, they got great press and were able to position themselves as innovative and forward-thinking.

When Social Media is Not Good:

1. When it doesn’t have the support of the leaders of your organization - you must get buy in and support from the folks at the top
2. When it doesn’t support the strategic goals of your business - that’s why you and I would start any social media conversation with a series of questions about your brand…
3. When your brand values are not embodied in every employee in the organization.

As I’ve told many people, had the social web been as active in 2000/2001 when I was at Enron, the folks in charge would never have been able to hide the things they did - precisely because of my last point. Neither the leaders nor the foot soldiers of any organization can be out of synch with the values their brand holds - and exhibits in the social web. There are too many opportunities for employees to share their observations and ideas in public.

Ping me when you’re ready to answer some questions. I’d love to have a fun discussion about your brand, and your values and objectives around it.

Then we’ll get to the social media stuff.

I’ve always loved Twitter’s Advanced Search capabilities above all others. News is they’re about to open up a little window into trending topics to everyone when they elevate their search bar. (Right now it’s hidden in a bottom link on the page).

A few folks are able to preview it, including Read Write Web, which has a screen shot of the upcoming enhancement.

For now, I use TweetDeck’s tag cloud feature to see rising trends, and keep up with breaking news. This will open up that capability to everyone who uses Twitter.

Can’t wait!

I was pretty good at math in high school. But those were the days before classic HP-type calculators made it into the high school classroom. We used slide rule calculators back then. Mine looked a lot like this:

And my math prowess back then was a lot more about Geometry and Trigonometry than Algebra.

Or was it the other way around?

(It has been more than 30 years…)

Anyway, I have a new client, Infinity Softworks, and they’ve been writing calculation software for mobile devices for 12 years. Their PowerOne product was a staple on Palm devices, and Infinity has sold more than 15 million mobile and software calculators.

I believe, though, that things are just about to get interesting… They’ve just launched FastFigures Financial Calculator for the iPhone, available in the AppStore for less than my slide rule cost in 1974.

Mobile Rocks, Even in this Economy

I’m pretty sure it’s not news to many that the mobile space is booming. Even in today’s economic climate. I just ran across some research from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) in their 2009 Mid Term Forecast (are we there already?), that offered the following stats for advertising growth (yes, I actually said areas of ad growth) this year:

• The Pure-Play Internet & Mobile Services (not sure exactly what their definition of “Pure-Play” is, sorry) segment is still growing but at a slower pace. Previously expected to grow by 15.5% in 2009, VSS now projects an increase of only 9.1% for 2009, down from 11.6% in 2008

• Mobile content and video games will continue to be in demand and record double-digit growth (34.2% and 19.5% respectively), however at significantly lower percentages than originally predicted in their earlier estimate

Elia Freedman, founder of Infinity, is a tech geek and a math geek, and has told me (and blogged) that he feels as if his time has finally come.

He envisioned the mobile application boom years ago, muscled his way through the first few waves, and his new iPhone calculator is so trippy that it both makes me feel like kind of a math dolt, and makes me a little sad I didn’t keep up with more math.

For example - he kept telling me that FF shipped with both a standard calculator and an RPN calculator. I had to look up what RPN meant - Reverse Polish Notation. Cool, but when I tried to watch Elia show how to use FastFigures RPN calculator in the YouTube video he’s cooked up, my brain kind of shuddered.

I’ve got my copy, and while I’ll still use my head to calculate tips - even for odd numbered groups - to prevent Alzheimer’s, I’ll always have FastFigures Financial calculator on my iPhone that can handle Time Value of Money, Commercial and Residential Mortgage Payments, Area Conversions, Powers and Logs, Trig and Hyperbolics, Probabilities, Programmer Math, and more. All for $5.99. Oh my!

In today’s economic climate, it seems a good idea to have a calculator to add up a few taxes here, a bit more savings there… we all know it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than a slide rule calculator to keep up.