LinkedIn Today Borrows from iGoogle, Facebook, Twitter

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Tim Eisenstadt

Several weeks ago, I wrote that LinkedIn has been signaling its intent to become a B2B marketing powerhouse. Over the last few weeks, Linkedin has released several new features intended to increase site activity and demonstrate its potential value leading up to its IPO.

Last week was no exception, as the company launched LinkedIn Today, which “surfaces the top headlines and stories being shared the most across multiple industries by LinkedIn’s trusted network of professionals.” LinkedIn users are able to customize their “front page” news by following sources by industry and publisher. Based on my profile, LinkedIn automatically set me up to follow categories such as Marketing & Advertising and Online Media. I also chose to follow several additional news sources.

The custom surfacing of content is attractive to professionals. The question is whether this is a valid reason for users to visit and stay longer on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Today incorporates the personalization of iGoogle, the networking of Twitter and the visuals of  Facebook
In addition to personalized homepages, content on LinkedIn is surfaced based on the people who shared it – both the volume of shares and their direct relationship to the user. This is the most “social” feature that LinkedIn has created to date, borrowing features from iGoogle, Twitter, and Facebook.

The news customization feature of the “front page” is equivalent to the iGoogle, which highlights news based on user preferences. Layered on top of this, LinkedIn allows users to share content with the broad LinkedIn community, attaching profile data and comments to the content they share. This feature is reminiscent of Twitter. Finally, LinkedIn added a Facebook-style visual layer by including previews of links within the page, graphics that indicate who shared articles, and time indicators that show when the article was first shared.

But while LinkedIn offers familiar tools, it is not unique on its own.
The familiar features that LinkedIn Today has incorporated will significantly reduce the learning curve for people coming to the site for the first time. However, is it enough to gain a loyal following? I don’t believe so, for the following reasons:

  • The alternatives are still better. iGoogle is backed by Google. A custom news page powered by Google is powerful because the user is one click away from the most powerful search engine. Meanwhile, on LinkedIn Today, the user is one click away their colleagues. While the news feature may keep some people on LinkedIn longer, iGoogle will remain the world’s homepage.
  • LinkedIn is not a networking site. While content can now be shared outside networks, becoming a LinkedIn connection is still a very formal process that requires approval by users. This is a huge barrier to true networking, which Twitter has overcome by making ‘following’ easy. Facebook remains for connecting with your best friends and family. Twitter is for meeting like-minded people you may never have met. These are both unique, very social, and outgoing activities. LinkedIn, meanwhile, remains for direct business contacts – by far the most formal and often times impersonal relationship type.
  • LinkedIn continues to battle user paranoia. Many people believe that logging into the site is an signal to others that they are looking for a job. This is not neccesarily an unwarranted concern.  LinkedIn needs to address this before the site will become truly become popular in the business community.
  • Meanwhile, beyond marketers and IT professionals, who is regularly on LinkedIn? The company boasts 90 million users, but how many are actually using the site rather than simply maintaining a profile?

To overcome these issues, LinkedIn needs to create a unique experience that is built for and valuable to business professionals. Building forums equivalent to workshops and conferences in which networking is encouraged and sharing is expected would go along way. The site is currently nowhere near that … yet. However, I hold out hope that LinkedIn will become the business-to-business social media site. But it first needs to invest its IPO dollars in the right ways.

Posted in digital marketing, Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, Twitter | Comments Off

Non-Profits: Low Funding? Achieve Your Mission Through Marketing

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Tim Eisenstadt

Marketing is an optional expense in the nonprofit world. Yes, it’s is valuable, but only when there is extra money left in the budget… or when a big grant is secured… or when a press release needs to go out (the most ineffective PR tactic, I should add.) Does this sound familiar?

In my experience, nonprofit management is generally focused on building and extending programs. This is understandable of course: building programs is the most tangible means to extend a nonprofit’s reach. However, relying on program development is problematic. Programs require long-term financial investments for staff, program materials, and business support, such as IT, HR, etc. Having the financial wherewithal to maintain this is difficult over the long run. Not many organizations have means to generate their own revenue and foundations are reticent to provide general operating funds, particularly these days.

However, there are other ways for nonprofit organizations to extend their reach and achieve their missions. When grant dollars are scarce and operating budgets are small, marketing is the most effective way to create lift for your organization. Here are some ways you can use marketing strategies to achieve your organization’s mission and ensure its long-term stability.

Extend your reach to new audiences. The most tangible and cost effective way to extend your organization’s reach is through a strong web presence. Whether your nonprofit influences policy, educates, or provides a direct service, making educational materials related to your organization’s work available online and engaging in conversation online with your target audience will broaden your impact significantly. Underlying this is the ultimate truth that high quality, relevant content is shared. By dedicating resources to this idea, you will oftentimes create more impact than a single program.

Deepen relationships with existing clients. Your nonprofit may already have a large client base. However, what happens when they walk out the door at the conclusion of the day’s program? Consistently communicating with your constituents is critical to building relationships and furthering your mission.  You can do this by ensuring your website is interactive and educational and that you engage with social media followers. This will cement relationships with clients.

Reduce efforts required to secure new funding from funders: Often times, funders only learn about how their money is being put used in year-end reports or site visits. These really should be a formality; nothing inside your reports should be a surprise to them. Instead, as much as you are comfortable and legally able to, broadcast your results – on your website and through local news articles, newsletters, annual reports, etc. And share this information with funders. This will build your funder’s trust and make it easier for them to plan future investments with your organization. It will also reduce your own stress.

Scale your efforts through mutually beneficial partnerships. Despite the decrease in available funding, you should not automatically consider other organizations in your space your competition. Instead, remember that the most effective promotional efforts are conducted on your behalf by other influential people and organizations. If you spend time developing relationships with like-minded or adjacent organizations, it will pay dividends. Share costs, content or communications channels (whichever you have the most) with them in return for their promotion of your efforts. This will not only extend your reach and increase scale of your efforts, but more importantly, it will support your long-term stability through the reinforcement of your position as an established organization.

Learn from others. The Gap’s recent logo snafu has given “crowd sourcing” a bad reputation. However, do not be dissuaded from learning through engagement online with clients, funders, etc. Many people in are eager to lend a hand and some will have ideas you haven’t thought of. Listen to them. Taking an adjusted approach is not always a bad idea.

Posted in business strategy, digital marketing, Facebook, nonprofit, social media, Twitter | Comments Off

The Power of Surround Sound Marketing (in 8 Steps)

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Tim Eisenstadt

According to Forrester Research, people now spend as much time watching television as they do online. Given people’s comfort online and the amount of information available, it’s not surprising that many turn to the Web when making buying decisions; 92% of Internet users use search engines to research products and services before making a purchase. However, what may be surprising is that 53% of Internet users visit blogs, 46% consider user-generated content, and 26% use information gleaned from social media networks.

New information resources and the increased sophistication of Internet users puts an onus on marketers to make information about their services available in more places, both to control message and to reach  new customers. And this means being strong in more than just digital marketing; traditional marketing is still in play as well; Internet users refer to magazines (20%), television (13%), and newspapers (10%) for their research as well.

This need to manage multiple channels of information can seem overwhelming. However, maintaining more channels does not mean you need to create an exponential amount of new content. In fact, you can be more effective by using multiple channels to echo variations of the same content.  This is called “Surround Sound Marketing,” which allows you to reinforce your message and streamline your efforts. Here are several tips for an effective surround sound marketing strategy:

1. Develop a research-based strategy: Before launching a blog, writing an email, or creating a newspaper ad, make sure you know who your target constituents are and where they are looking for information. You do not want to spend time maintaining channels that will not reach potential or current customers. The best way to determine this is through marketing research – start with surveying people similar to your target audience or calling current customers about where they spend time researching and interacting online. Validate your findings from your research by comparing it to industry data. Marketing Sherpa is a good resource. If something seems off, re-examine your survey process and make sure you are referring to the right industry data.

2. Optimize your website. Your website is your online identity and primary communications tools.

  • Make sure it not only conveys who you are, but that it is also intuitive to use. Is it easy to make a donation, conduct a transaction, submit contact information, etc.?
  • Invest the time and resources to ensure your content is constantly updated. Search engines rank sites higher based on the freshness of content. (This is an argument to host a blog on your site.)
  • Add forms to your site that allow people to provide contact information in return for some benefit (to be determined based on your strategy.) Some organizations put their most valuable content behind forms as a way to encourage visitors to provide this information.

3. Drive visitors to your website. Once your site is ready, drive traffic to it whenever and wherever you can. Collateral, ads, emails, posters, press releases, and postings to Twitter and Facebook should all contain links to your website. If you have resources, build separate pages on your site (landing pages) – one for each channel – to measure the success of each individual campaign.

4. Maximize impact of your email marketing by minimizing content: Instead cramming your messages into small spaces within emails, rely on the fact that your website tells your story and instead focus more on encouraging recipients to click links that direct people to your site. Use enticing text and buttons, and build in “white space,” to create the greatest impact.

5. Build out your social media presence: Building presences on multiple sites does not mean you have to create brand new content for each site. If you are already creating quality content for your website, brochures, etc., why not also share on Facebook and Twitter? There are numerous benefits to building out presences on multiple sites: Put a face to your organization; Drive traffic to your site; and build out “first page search results” – the first entries on search engines when typing in your business name.

6. Engage on other sites: This may be most low-cost, yet effective surround sound marketing tactic. Find other established sites online, e.g. blogs or LinkedIn pages, that your target audience engages on and begin interacting there as well. By posting thoughtful, informative and well-written information, you can establish yourself as a thought leader, learn industry information, and you may also find prospective customers. You can do all of this without the hassle of maintaining your own sites.

7. Measure, measure, measure: Ensure you have a way to capture data and measure so you can understand the effectiveness of your efforts and changes over time. Start with the basics, such as open and click rates for emails and followers on social media sites. Another basic tool you should use is Google Analytics, a free tool that – among other things – measures how many visits your website receives and where visitors are coming from. This can help you measure not only the growth of your site, but also the effectiveness of your social media efforts, for instance by monitoring visits that originated from Twitter.

8. Finally, make sure the tactics you choose can be executed within limits of your resources. During your research, you will come up with a lot of good ideas, but not everything can be done or done well. For instance, it is not enough to only occasionally post links on Facebook or Twitter. To be successful, you need to ensure your sites interesting and that you genuinely interact with your followers. Fully consider your goals and what would be nice to do versus what needs to be done to maintain a going concern. If you are unable to dedicate resources to doing something well, consider not doing it all. Otherwise, you may cause more harm than good for your brand.

Posted in business strategy, corporate website, digital marketing, landing page, marketing budget, Measuring, social media, traditional marketing | Comments Off

LinkedIn signals its intent to become a B2B marketing powerhouse

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Tim Eisenstadt

Last Thursday, LinkedIn filed papers for IPO, likely making it the first of several social media sites to go public. The company has been signaling its intents for several months through a recent stream of new “marketing friendly” features geared to increase its value. By launching the following features, LinkedIn has shown it is intent  on becoming a powerhouse in the, thus far, untapped business-to-business social media marketing industry.

  • LinkedIn Advertising: Based on the Google AdWords model, LinkedIn Advertising is a pay-per-click model that leverages its user profiles to enable businesses to conduct targeted advertising campaigns based on industry, company size, seniority level, and location. This is particularly valuable for businesses that rely on communicating to the right individuals at the right businesses for new sales.
  • Product Pages: LinkedIn Product Pages provide businesses with the ability to showcase their products on LinkedIn. These pages, located at the “product” tab on company profiles, allow businesses to create individual pages for each of their products. These pages offer space for a brief description, banner advertising, and product videos. Most importantly, these pages also allow businesses to secure recommendations from customers, akin to individuals receiving recommendations from a manager or vendor. Imagine the power of recommendation for a small start-up OEM from the head of IBM’s procurement.
  • LinkedIn Follow Button: The LinkedIn follow button allows LinkedIn users to follow businesses they are interested in. By clicking this button, the user immediately begins to receive updates in their feed from the followed company on recent hires and departures, new product launches, and updated messaging. While this does not feel very remarkable, imagine the power of the Facebook “Like Button.” This functionality lays the ground work for a significant communication tool on LinkedIn as company profiles continue to grow and provide more dyanamic capabilities to businesses.

Until the above features were launched, LinkedIn was simply an “online rolodex.” The site’s value was based solely on one-to-one relationships — individual connections, personal recommendations, forums and groups. While valuable (and also a critical baseline to establish valuable functionality), these benefits alone were not lucrative or attractive to investors. For that reason, establishing new marketing features were critical to LinkedIn for its IPO. Now, businesses can engage both with individuals and other businesses in a many-to-one paradigm. Above all else, this creates new sales opportunities for businesses.

LinkedIn’s new features have the potential to take business-to-business (B2B) social media marketing to a new level. To date, Facebook has not established itself in the B2B market, choosing to remain focused on creating casual interactions and maintaining its reputation as a non-work time activity. Meanwhile, Twitter has established itself as a B2B marketing tool by giving businesses the ability to respond to customer inquiries and to showcase their market knowledge. However, Twitter does not allow for businesses to establish visually appealing pages or to showcase its connections, ala Facebook does. This leaves an opportunity for LinkedIn.

Facebook and Twitter have paved the way for LinkedIn’s coming out party. These two companies have established social media marketing as a valuable strategy for engaging with customers, creating leads, and fostering loyalty. They also forced businesses to develop best practices and policies through trial and error. During this time in the growth of social media, it was critical for LinkedIn to remain on the sideline due to the relatively sensitive nature of its content. Still today, many consider it a bad site bad to engage on (less rumors of job hunting spread.) However, now that engaging in social media is an accepted practice and LinkedIn is becoming a more business marketing tool, it is likely more individuals will start engaging on the site.

All together, this has created an opportunity for LinkedIn to become a powerhouse. It will be interesting to see how the business will use its new assets from its IPO to take the site to the next level.

Posted in Advertising, business strategy, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing budget, social media, Twitter | Comments Off

The Tipping Point of Smart Phones and Mobile Marketing Today

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Tim Eisenstadt

The tipping point of smart phones occurred last week when my wife – not exactly an early adopter – purchased an HTC Incredible. She’s not alone. According to a December 2010 comScore report, 60.7 million Americans are currently using smart phones, representing 1 out of every 4 mobile subscribers and a 14 percent increase over the previous three months. This adoption trend will no doubt continue in 2011 as contracts attached to traditional phones expire, the Iphone launches on Verizon, and smart phones become available at tiered price points.

This also means that the demand for mobile content will continue to rise. According to a second comScore report, in June 2010, 43.7 percent of mobile users in the United States accessed “connected media” – apps or downloaded content – through their mobile device. (In Japan, the number is even higher at 75 percent.)

This growing connection to mobile content represents a very significant growth opportunity for companies to create brand awareness and sales. Clearly those that are able to harness technology to deliver valuable content (discounts, information) to customers with perfect timing (based on their location) will be the next big winners.

To date, many attempts have been made by various companies to take advantage of mobile marketing. Below is an analysis by category of mobile apps and sites, in order of their “robustness” and value to customers.

  • “Check In” Social Media Apps like FourSquare and Gowalla have been successful first movers.  They have persuaded users to check into locations, publicly signaling their whereabouts, in return for badges and discounts, and have secured partnerships with big companies Disney and Starbucks. However, after two years since FourSquare was launched at SXSW, they have yet to demonstrate a sustainable business model. Once badges are secured and “mayorships” are earned, the novelty wears off, and now that Facebook and Twitter also offer location-based check-ins, the need for a separate app is questionable.
  • Static Mobile Advertising Sites have been increasingly popping up more. These are informational mobile sites intended for target customers to visit when they are in the midst of a buying decision. For instance, if you visit the Robitussin mobile site, you will be directed to a program that will help you identify which type of Robitussin to purchase based on your symptoms. The idea is that users will visit the site on their smart phone when they are at the pharmacy. Though the app itself is low-cost, Robitussin is certainly investing in it, as evidence by their commercials, shown here. This static mobile site represents the entry level of mobile marketing. While it is low-cost to create, it is not truly location-based in its truest sense; location does not trigger an activity, nor does the site allow for commerce.
  • Mobile Commerce Sites, which allow users to make purchase from online stores via smart phones, are also on the rise. The number of online shoppers making a purchase from their phones increased more than five-fold this season to 11%, according to ForeSee Results. Here is a list of upcoming mobile sites according to AdAge, which includes Amazon (not surprising), Crate & Barrel, and Target. Forget avoiding stores using the internet; now users can avoid sitting down at a computer!  This soon will be the standard for most stores with a significant online commerce presence.
  • Location-based Commerce Apps is the true next opportunity for mobile marketing. These apps will send users store-specific discounts based on their location and allow for on-site purchases via smart phones. Last week, Starbucks launched a mobile payment system that allows customers with IPhones and Blackberries to make purchases. While many are justifiably concerned about security issues, these are short term issues that will inevitably arise and subsequently be dealt with. As a whole, this represents a significant step forward for mobile products and communications.

Have you come across any business apps that increase sales, promote brand awareness, or engage new customers?

Posted in app, mobile marketing, mobile website, social media | Comments Off

Implications of Facebook Landing Pages in Television Commercials

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Tim Eisenstadt

Facebook logoIncreasingly, a number of companies are using Facebook pages as landing pages for television commercials and advertising campaigns instead of their own corporate website or custom landing page. Here are examples of commercials from Toyota, Carl’s Junior, and Carnival Cruises, which end with call-to-action’s to their Facebook pages.

This trend makes sense for several reasons. First, the rate of converting a visit from a commercial to a Facebook page instead of a proprietary site is likely higher with certain audiences. The ubiquitous Facebook site is familiar to many users and, in the event a user forgets the specific URL they are searching for, the site can be easily searched. Second, Facebook is extremely sticky. Once a fan is captured, businesses can continually push content out to them regardless if it is explicitly being searched for. This perpetual brand exposure is more valuable than a single visit to a company site, like Toyota.com.

This latest trend is an indicator of a potentially dramatic shift in the paradigm of web advertising. According to Marketing Sherpa, currently only 11% of a typical online marketing budget is spent on social media. Meanwhile, 27% is spent on website and an additional 31% is spent on associated pay-per-click campaigns and SEO efforts. Meanwhile, investment in social media has been trending upwards. Should these Facebook landing pages be successful as proofs of concepts, we may see a further reallocation of the marketing budget.

The question is will companies – especially those with large marketing budgets and that have a great deal invested in their brand equity – be willing to allow their brand to be subservient to Facebook? Historically, the most popular purveyors of content (television, radio, print) have been the most attractive to advertisers. But none have had the singular power of Facebook to dilute surrounding brands. Despite its popularity and the low-cost for businesses to leverage, do companies risk weakening their own brand by allocating more resources to social media?

This conundrum opens the door for the development of new social media tools that allow companies to have more control over their brand. Ning is an example of a build-you-own social media site. Mobile Roadie is an example of a build-your-own app. Or will big companies begin allocating their web resources to build their own propriety social media sites and apps?

Posted in corporate website, Facebook, landing page, marketing budget, social media | Comments Off