Notes from a wireframe world

It’s easy to get wrapped up in new technology, and see benefits to your business in investing in one form or another, without any hard facts to back your views up.

Thats what makes the the resent McKinsey Quarterly “Global Survey” so interesting, they asked companies about the benefits gained from using various Web 2.0 tools, both internally and externally. Blogs and video where seen as important tools for both internally and externally however surprisingly microbloging services (read twitter) where seen as much less useful. If that is just down to a currently low take-up of such services by non tech businesses, of if twitter really isn’t the best way to reach an audience, is maybe something that need further research, however anecdotal evidence suggests it’s the forma.

Technologies such as wikis, podcasts, ratings and tags were less useful, but still benefited customer relationships for about one-quarter to one-third of companies worldwide.

More than one-half of respondents (52%) said Web 2.0 tools increased marketing effectiveness, while 43% reported higher customer satisfaction and 38% reduced marketing costs.

Businesses in the high-tech/telecom industry were most likely to report customer-related benefits of Web 2.0, at 65%, followed by business/legal/professional services firms, at 60%.

Companies cannot simply adopt these technologies and expect their customers to use them en masse, however. Among firms reporting measurable benefits from Web 2.0, 74% said it was important to integrate the tools with other forms of customer interaction, and 52% said marketing the Web 2.0 initiatives themselves was a best practice.

A number of my friends (and all my facebook friends I know or have known in real life) have been taken in by this so called virus. Hopefully they didn’t install any “fix” for it.

So I’m re-posting this article from Mashabul to my posterous account, and by extension my blog, twitter and facebook accounts, solely to spread the word.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

Well Twitter has final revised it terms of service, hopeful this will mean the end of the road for spammers, fake accounts and twitter name squatters, however the news people are reporting is the shocking fact, the new terms of service officially allow advertisements. Well I’m sorry to burst the bubble of throes newspapers that broke this story but… twitter has always allowed ad’s. In fact for the last few months it’s been running them. Just under your followers count.

OK twitter hasn’t been paid for them, but they have been their. Also for the last few years twitter has allowed people to use services like Sponsored Tweets and get paid for sending posting ad’s out on to their twitter stream.

OK so your all set, you have a nice web site, you know the basics of how to use social media to your advantage, and now… How the hell do you find the people who may be interested in your project?

The answer… Google

Google has a whole range of free, easy to use tools that can help you make the most of social media and the Internet.

First off iGoogle, Google’s nice and fancy front end. Based on netvibes iGoogle allows you to add widgets to Google’s search front page (only you see your widgets of course) Google mail, Google notebook, Google Calendar, and RSS reader and Google Doc’s (as well as a phase of the moon widget, but I think you’ll be more interested in the others).

This allows me to use Google’s home page as a one-stop-shop for how the areas of interest my customers have is going, as well as my e-mail and project management tools. It’s really what I link everything else in with.

Next Google Alerts, Google Alerts allows you to set up an RSS feed (that goes into my Google RSS Reader) for any keywords, this allows you to be able to comment on any story that Google picks up that relates to your product.

Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts – ‘News’, ‘Web’, ‘Blogs’, ‘Comprehensive’, ‘Video’ and ‘Groups’.

• A ‘News’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.

• A ‘Web’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.

• A ‘Blogs’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.

• A ‘Comprehensive’ alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.

• A ‘Video’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.

• A ‘Groups’ alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

I recommend you go for A ‘Comprehensive’ alert for the major keywords you found in step 1.

This Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (or whatever your targeted social media sites are) searches should provide you with enough information to start to pick-up on the on-line vibe, and allow you to start making your self known (in the right way) to the community.

OK Social media and it’s use withing the context of on-line marketing is huge and I intend to go through every thing in one blog post, however the basics are relatively easy to grasp, they are.

1. There is no magic trick, no magic bullet.

2. Be yourself

3. Don’t try and sell, help.

1] There is no magic trick.

Sadly there is no magic do this and you will earn $700,000 in fifteen minutes rubbish, anyone who tells you that there is is either pushing something that either illegal, did work but then people caught on to it and it doesn’t any more or just snake oil. Just stop for a second and think, you know as well as I do money doesn’t grow on trees, and if it did, if you found a real life money tree, would you tell anyone? Of course not.

Sadly even in a recession, no especially in a recession, people are looking to make a quick buck, and the promise of the big cheque for a few dollars sounds too good to pass up. Sadly all you’ll get if a little poorer. There is a lot of good advice on how to make money on-line mostly from blogs such as this one, and it’s all free, don’t pay for social media snake oil.

That said if you really feel the need to pay something, there is, to the left of this article a section entitled “Help us keep going” their you can donate via paypal or if your feeling really flush buy something on my wish list.

2] Be yourself

Strange as it may sound one of the easily overlooked areas of social networks for marketers is the social side. To some it’s all about spamming their links to thousands of people who don’t then bother to read them.

People really don’t like this type of one way traffic. Hold conversations with people, tweet and post stuff your interested in that relevant to what your customers are interested in, not just about your latest product.

3] Don’t try and sell.

WHAT! DON’T sell. Yes you read that right, don’t sell. It goes back to the previous point, about having a conversation with people. As Perry Belcher said in his video that I posted here a couple of days ago, Social media is like a big cocktail party, and at a cocktail party you don’t run in and try and sell everyone something, you wait till there is someone their who needs what you can offer and you point out you can sell it to them.

And thats it. Yep thats all there is, OK it’s not ALL there is, but it’s a big chunk of it, it’s the right mindset at least.