I love this song by The Who, especially this part of the lyrics:

I took the tube back out of town
Home to the rolling pin
I felt a little like a dying clown
But with a streak of Rin Tin Tin
I stretched back and I hiccuped
Looked back on my busy day
Eleven hours in the tin pan
God there’s got to be another way

This part of the song reminds of the time when I was struggling with my business. I was working so hard and it just didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere. It took an exercise I do with my clients to get my business back on track. It basically came down to honestly answering the following question:

What is the one thing that defines your business?

When we’re trying to grow our business, we tend to accept work for many different types of services – ‘Well, sure I can find a way to handle that type of work’ or ‘I’ve never done that before but hey, if you’re willing to pay me to do that, I’ll give it a try.’ Too many of these jobs can take us off our focus, become a bad use of our time and often, they end up hurting our bottom line.

There comes a time when we realize we can’t be everything to everybody. No one wants to be the backup singer for the opening act with a thousand other people singing the same tune. If you can find your focus, then your business can turn into the headliner who owns the stage.

So, how does this ‘finding your focus’ thing work? Let’s work through these steps to discover your niche market. Our final goal is to get to the final statement where your business ‘equals’ who you are. My favorite example that explains where we’re going is Disney = Magic.

Let’s run through this exercise using my business, Fox Interactive. When I first answer the question ‘What equals your business?’, I could say something like social media, marketing or even combine the two to say social media marketing. That’s a great term to use for SEO but it really doesn’t explain to you about what we do or give you a reason to contact me and hopefully, hire my company.

So what really sets Fox Interactive apart from all the other social media marketing companies? (If you’re working on this exercise – here’s the part where you have to get out a piece of paper or pull up a word document in your computer.) If I make a list about my company and what makes us unique, it would look like this:

• Fox Interactive has been in business since 1999 so we’re a stable business – meaning we’re not a fly-by-night company who will disappear after cashing your deposit check
• We are a marketing company who focuses solely on media planning/placement, developing social media campaigns and social media training – meaning no, we don’t handle SEO, website development or developing mobile apps
• Our team provides ROI and analytic reports to help create efficient campaigns – meaning you’ll see the results of what you paid for instead of guessing about whether it worked or not
• As the head of this really cool company, I am a social media strategist who takes your campaigns past just the graphics and setup of your social media presence – meaning we help your take your traditional marketing plans and show you how to translate them into social media marketing

When we look at my unique stuff list, what does this say about who we are? We could say our elevator speech is: Are you struggling to figure out how to make social media work for your company? Fox Interactive is your social media personal trainer who offers our experience to design an effective marketing program to help you reach your social media goals.

And then take it down to its baseline of who we are: Fox Interactive = a Strategic Marketing Personal Trainer. And that’s how you find your own Disney magic.

Take some time to work through this exercise and let me know what you discover about your company in the comments below.

Photo credit: Who am I?

I was running a search on global marketing and somehow it found a link where I could view a satellite image of the earth. Like anyone trying to avoid work for a few moments, I clicked on the link and watched our planet on my laptop. Once I got over the coolness factor, a thought occurred to me. The world doesn’t seem so big when I’m looking at it in my computer screen.

It seems that’s what social media has done for marketing. Before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, it felt like companies were so far out of our reach. If we had a problem or complaint, we could try to send an email or even worse, find ourselves in the never-ending voice mail system of trying to reach a person to help us. We never knew if we were reaching the right person or if we even impacted these companies with our feedback.

Along came social media and now our favorite brands are click away. We can reach the people we need to connect with even if they’re in another city, another state or even another country. It comes down to that ever-overused buzz word – engagement. Consumers now have the ability to connect directly with companies through the various social media platforms. In a sense, social media has now taken down the wall between customers and their favorite brand’s decision-makers.

When we talk about fishing where the fish are, it’s hard not to imagine connecting with a school of fish in these oceans who will turn into loyal customers. Take a look at some of these 2012 social media statistics:

• Facebook has more then 800 million users (Social Media Examiner)
• Average Facebook user has 130 friends and likes 80 fan pages (Social Media Examiner)
• 56% of consumers will recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan on Facebook (Mashable)
• 3.5 billion pieces of content is shared every week on Facebook (Hubspot)

• Twitter has over 100 million active users (eMarketer)
• 34% of marketers have generated leads from Twitter and 20% have closed deals using Twitter (AllTwitter)
• 40% don’t actually tweet but check into their accounts daily to follow the conversations (CNN/Fortune)
• Beyonce’s pregnancy news at the MTV  VMA awards show birthed a new Twitter record of 8,868 tweets per second to share the news (TechCrunch)

• Linkedin has 64 million users in the US and over 100 million if you include areas outside of the US (AllTwitter)
• 33% prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility and work mobility over salary in accepting a job offer (GigaOm)
• With 245 million internet users in the US, Nielsen estimates that social media sites and blogs reach 80% of all active users in the US (PR Week)
• Consumers who use social media especially with apps like Foursquare and UrbanSpoon dine out more and are more likely to become return customers (ReadWriteWeb)

These are just a few of the statistics out there to demonstrate the power of the social media scene. If you’re one of the companies who have been hesitant to join the social media world, what are you waiting for? Does this list of statistics change your mind?

Photo credit: Statistics

As I drove to a Social Media training session for the employees of an active adult community, I was thinking about the word Joy. I had been working on a project with my mastermind group and we each had to come up with a specific word that we felt best represented us.

So when I was asked to come up with my word, the first word that came to mind was humor. It seemed like the perfect word for me because I’m so full of it (humor that is). But when I really started to think about my word, I took it down to its core about what humor really meant to me. What was humor? It wasn’t about being funny, quirky or good at telling jokes. Humor was really joy.

Humor brings out the purest form of joy in all of us. It’s about sharing a joke with a friend over lunch. It’s about watching your child on stage singing off-key in the school play. It’s about laughing so hard that tears roll down your face and you can’t even remember what it was that you were both laughing about in the first place. It’s that feeling we get when we know that all is right with the world.

So here I was driving to the other end of town and thinking about joy. The workshop session was about developing blog content for the company’s blog but when I came into the room, I had immediately noticed their body language. Legs were crossed and their bodies were leaning away from me. The employees were already looking at their watches and checking their phones about 20 minutes into the session.

Sensing a problem, I stopped the workshop, pulled up a chair at the table with them and asked what was going on. They admitted they didn’t want to be there, they didn’t like the idea that they’d have one more thing to do for their jobs. One of the managers confessed that she was trying to find a way to cancel the meeting before we showed up.

Fortunately for me (and the client), I had joy on my mind. I turned the session around into an informal exchange where I had them answer the questions, “Who are you in this company?” “What do you love to do?” “What are you passionate about?”

I found that when I took the time to ask the right questions, the session turned away from the idea that we were adding more work to their already busy days. Their body language changed, arms were uncrossed, their faces glowed with enthusiasm, their bodies were leaning towards me. We started laughing. They started to enjoy participating in the training session.

The rest of our time flew by and we did ultimately develop the content for their blog posts. The employees who attended this session had discovered their voice. They worked through the different layers surrounding their jobs and unwrapped why they love their work. In the end, they found their joy.

So when we look at ourselves and why we became business owners, we know that we ‘felt joy’ for what we do. That internal joy is why we took a deep breath, reached down inside to find our strength and started our companies. It’s not work if you love what you do.

Take the time to ask yourself these questions:

What joyful thing do you wish you could experience? What’s stopping you?

“Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It is the thing that gives you juice. The thing that you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself.”
― Oprah Winfrey

Photo credit: Joy

Recently I read several articles about an online battle with the diaper brand Huggies and Dads. Yes, I said Dads. Not Moms. Huggies had launched an TV ad campaign called the “Dad test” where five Moms left their babies – and everything that comes with taking care of a baby – with their husbands for five days. Huggies called this ‘the ultimate test’ and they showed these Dads in various states of confusion while their wives were out having some well-needed girl time.

The poop hit the fan (yep, pun intended) and several stay-at-home Dads hit the social media world with their complaints. Several online petitions and thousand of Facebook comments and tweets later, Huggies pulled the ads and apologized for the way they misrepresented Dads in their marketing campaign. While this had signs of the 2008 Motrin Moms debacle, I couldn’t help but take a step back and ask, “When did Dads become a target audience for diapers?”

Maybe the bigger question is “Are Dads the hot new target market for brands?” With my research hat on, I went in search of some answers. And what I quickly learned was, today’s Dads aren’t the same ‘breadwinner-doing-yardwork-sports-tv-watching’ men who we were raised with. Census figures show that Dads are spending more time at home with the kids and in 1/3 of US homes, Dads are the primary caregiver. Whether this has been a result of job loss from the economy or the sociological shifts which are occurring, it’s pretty clear that Dads are indeed a new target audience for childcare products.

It appears that Dads are more involved with their families and taking on more of what was considered ‘the female role’ in the house.  With these changes in Dad behaviors, most marketers don’t seem to ‘get it.’ They’re continuing to follow along the lines of these marketing myths and need to reinvent their message if they want to reach Dads.

1. Dads don’t shop: These census figures show that men are not only taking care of the kids but doing other ‘housewife duties’ including the weekly shopping, managing the budget and taking care of the house. The Huggies incident proves that men do have an equal voice in their house and they’re not afraid to use it.

2. Dads don’t do brand research: The old line goes, ‘if its not about cars, sports or games, men don’t really care.’ Today’s fathers use of online research for household and childcare related products are higher than men in a previous generation. The research suggests that having kids affects how both parents make purchases, not just Moms.

3. Dads are just the babysitter for the day: Most consumer brands continue to target Moms and show Dads as a bumbling follower in the house. My research found this be quite the opposite. Dads are more then just a confused fool trying to figure out how to work the microwave. New studies show Dads know more about childcare then their fathers. Many of the men felt the marketing ads weren’t speaking to them as an important target audience, despite being the fact some are the primary or shared decision-maker for childcare purchases.

Of course, this data is still pretty fresh and not everyone can agree upon the extent of Dad’s buying power. Women who work full-time were surveyed about who runs their households and a majority claimed they were still primarily responsible for household buying decisions. I’m sure the truth of this matter probably lies somewhere in between.

It’s certainly something to watch as time goes by just how much influence Dad’s have in the household decision making. But as the old saying goes, “the proof is in the pudding” or maybe in this case, we should say, “the proof is in the diaper.”

Photo credit: Father and son surf lesson

We’re working on a marketing program and looking for some feedback. If you have a few minutes, we would appreciate your time. 

If you had to come up with one word, one phrase or one sentence that defines your business, what would it be?

Let me know in the comments below.

Thanks so much for your help!

Photo credit: Question Mark

As promised in my Pinterest Facts post, I’ve done some research to see if small businesses are actually finding a way to grow their companies using Pinterest. What I found didn’t surprise me. When you think about the number of people on Pinterest, the amount of time spent on Pinterest (which is still more overall minutes then Facebook!) and the target audience that Pinterest reaches, it can only add up to a successful social media story.

What really makes a successful social media campaign?

When you look at all the social media information out there, we’ve learned your marketing plan should include the Three C’s: content, community and connections (or engagement but that doesn’t really start with a C so we’ll use my word). Based on these three factors, let’s take a look at these businesses who aren’t just using Pinterest in their social media mix but seeing substantial growth leading to potential sales.

Content: Visit Bucks County

Visit Bucks County is the official tourism marketing arm for Bucks County, Pa. They signed on to Pinterest in January with one goal in mind – show new visitors everything Bucks County had to offer, hoping to affect the travel planners in the family. In most homes, the vacation decisions are made by the female head of the house and what better way to reach them then to set up shop in one of the top social media programs for women.

When you take a look at the content they posted, you can see the dedicated boards showing where to go and what to do on your vacation to Bucks County. They were one of the first tourism organization to launch a Pinterest contest where they partnered with local attractions and businesses to create Bucks County prize packages. Pinterest users were asked to repin the different prize packages they wanted to win and share these items on their boards. The contest kicked their followers into high gear and the contest pinboard generated more than 400 followers and nearly 1,000 repins.

Another promotion Bucks County ran was to promote a press release featuring the Top 12 Reasons to Visit Bucks County. They then created a pinboard specifically to highlight the top 12 reasons and directed everyone interested in learning more about their tourist destination to the pinboard. Their increase in followers has grown to 2,500 fans in just three months. While that number may not initially seem like a lot, just ask yourself ….  where can your company can find 2,500 targeted fans for your business without spending a dime?

Community: PediaStaff

PediaStaff is a staffing firm that specializes in recruitment and staffing for pediatric therapists. PediaStaff signed on to Pinterest in August 2011 and currently has almost 17,000 followers. Quite a few of their 130 boards have even more followers and Pinterest has now become their biggest source of traffic to their web site, driving three times more traffic then Facebook does.

PediaStaff had always focused on reaching the specialized community of pediatric therapists and have used other social media programs like Linkedin, blogging and Twitter to reach out to potential recruits. Now Pinterest has become their number one source to develop these online relationships with pediatric therapists and the companies looking to hire them. One of their top boards called the announcement board includes resource information about PediaStaff, instructions on how followers can submit content ideas and suggestions to encourage pinners where to connect with them so they can receive other announcements.

PediaStaff found a way to create the ever-important conversation within their Pinterest community. They setup dedicated discussion boards for the different types of pediatric therapists and they posted pins or discussion ideas to inspire the therapists to share their experiences. To keep the community conversation going, PediaStaff setup a discussion starter board where followers can post new convesration ideas which then get converted into dedicated pins within the discussion boards.

After only six months of being on the program, Pinterest was sending PediaStaff more web traffic then their Facebook fan page. From their creative uses of engaging with their community, Pinterest has helped PediaStaff develop an online reputation as a resource for pediatric therapists.

Connections: Kate and thesmallthingsblog

Meet Kate. She’s a hairstylist, jewelry maker and all around crafty kinda person from NC. Kate writes a blog called thesmallthingsblog where she shares her crafting tips and hairstyle tricks. Like every blog, she was developing her connections through family and friends. Building her community was going slow until Kate discovered Pinterest. What started as a thought to pin an image of a hairstyle designed by Kate that directed Pinterest users to her blog to watch the tutorial video, instantly turned into 100,000 page views on her blog site.

After that day, Kate From TheSmallThingsBlog Pinterest boards has taken her business to the next level. Due to her success on Pinterest, Kate gained 16,000 blog subscribers and over 30,000 Pinterest followers. Kate isn’t just seeing the growth on Pinterest. Last year she started working with her first sponsor for her blog and due to the many hairstyle pins, she’s generating interest for private hairstyling clients.

So what have learned here today? Not all social media platforms are for every business but if you’re company has visual content, looking to communicate with potential customers by building a community and want to offer your target market more unique ways to connect and engage with your brand, then my friends … it looks like a Pinterest campaign could be in your future.

In case you missed any of the Pinterest posts in this series, here are the links:

• I’ve Got a Golden Pinterest Ticket
• Just the Pinterest Facts Ma’am
• AND stayed tuned for the next in the series …. how to discover your Pinterest Voice

Are you using Pinterest and seeing growth opportunities for your company? If so, please share in the comments your success story!

And the answer is …. 2,600-acres in Tucson, Ariz., filled with retired helicopters, airplanes, cargo planes and old World War II bombers. Get more details at this link from NPR’s the picture show.

As I was enjoying lunch at a local restaurant, I happened to notice a table of 20-something women sitting across from me. While they ate and chatted, I couldn’t help but notice the constant use of their phones. They were consistently texting and flipping through their phone screens in between bites. I started to wonder if they were even texting each other messages like ‘how’s your salad?’ and ‘are you going to eat the rest of your fries?”

My encounter with the Gen Y Lunch Club started my target market mind churning. As the first generation to be raised with technology, it’s pretty much a given that companies can connect with these potential customers on almost all of the social networks. But just because they live their life with techno-gadgets, it’s not the true definition of who they are.

The Millennials or the traditional term of Generation Y, born between 1980 and 1995, have found a way to completely integrate their lives with technology and social media. Many brands are trying to fight for their attention as this target audience ages and will soon become a stronger buying force then the Baby Boomers. While many companies are attempting to connect with the Gen Y crowd with Facebook ads and placing Google Adword campaigns, the research shows the best way to reach this group is through word of mouth marketing.

The influence of their friends and family means more to them then a free offer from an online banner ad. They get their information from their friends’ Facebook posts, not the TV commercials we run on MTV. And email marketing? You can forget that one too. Most just have an email account to setup their social networks. They text each other. They message each other on Facebook. They tweet to each other about where they are and what they’re doing. Gen Y will only pay attention to your marketing message if its been recommended by their friends within their social community.

Let me throw in a few facts and figures from Mr Y (Mr Youth’s report Meet the Class of 2015) for my stat-loving readers:

• 66% would look up a store after learning their friend had checked in. (Mr Y)
• 52% have over 300 friends on Facebook. Top 10%, over 1,000. (Mr Y)
• 58% use Twitter “all the time” (Mr Y)
• 40% visit Facebook more than 10 times per day. (Mr Y)
• 67% access Facebook from their smart phone (Mr Y)
• 59% visit Facebook during class (Mr Y)
• 80% use 2 or more devices simultaneously while watching TV (Mr Y)
• 38% of students surveyed said they could not go more than 10 minutes without checking their digital device—about the time it takes to walk to class. (EMarketer’s report on College Students)
• Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. (Pew Internet)

The Millennials have the tools to reach and be influenced by a larger group of people then any other generation. They understand the power of social media. They’ve seen revolutions take place on YouTube, news breaking on Twitter and even joined a movement to get Betty White to host SNL from a Facebook post. If your company is trying to market to the Millennials then your team needs to throw away your old marketing rule book. It seems there’s only one real marketing rule to follow when connecting with Gen Y: Learn to listen more and broadcast less.

Are you marketing to the Gen Y audience? Let me know what campaigns have worked and what didn’t.

Photo credit: And then Victor said

“The cocktail party has a simple function in modern society. Its basic purpose is to pay off social debts.” — Hal Boyle, A guy who spends an awful lot of time talking about cocktail parties, for someone who doesn’t like them. June 22, 1950

The closest I’ve ever come to a cocktail party was when I attended the University of Georgia. On two separate occasions, I attempted to go to what is known as The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. It’s an annual football game played in Jacksonville between UGA and the University of Florida. I use the word attempted because on my first visit, I ended up selling my ticket and watched the game at a place called The Landing. The second time I made the trip, I was smart enough to not even bother with buying a ticket and just showed up for the party. I can honestly say that I’ve never been inside the stadium to be a part of The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.

When I think back to the time of the 1950′s cocktail party, it was all about getting together with friends and people you knew from work. Most of the parties had more people than seats since the cocktail party was all about the mingling and making new friends. It became a form of business entertaining brought into the home. The cocktail party turned into an opportunity to connect with employers and coworkers outside of the office.

In my recent post, The Return of the 1950′s Neighborhood Store, I touched on the message of how social media creates a feeling of community with our customers (fans/followers). The concept of the cocktail party takes it a step further for the business owner. Our social networks aren’t just for staying in touch with family and high school friends. It’s an opportunity to network with other business owners and engage with potential new customers.

We spend our time on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin like we’re hanging out in a big party. We become connected to influencers in our industry through commenting on their blogs. We meet people who can collaborate on a big project with us through one of our Linkedin groups. We’re laughing, sharing ideas and making connections with people we wouldn’t have been able to meet if not for these social networks.

Think about the latest social media program Pinterest. Just like any decent cocktail party from the 1950′s, you actually need an invitation to get into the ever-growing world of Pinterest. Not just the click of a mouse, but a true real live invitation. Fortunately this invite doesn’t come by snail mail so we can’t use the excuse ‘my invitation got lost in mail.’

The 1950’s cocktail party was really just their version of social media. It was all about family, friends, entertaining and celebrating our life. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt every once and awhile if we all turned on a little lounge music, shut down the office and bring back the cocktail party.

Photo credit: Dinner Party

It never surprises me when I hear myself say those words when I’m teaching a workshop. Maybe its just my background as a media buyer that brings it on but somehow, an interactive discussion with the folks attending my workshop gets me talking about marketing strategy and how to find more customers. This conversation always gives me an excuse to say my favorite marketing phrase, “fish where the fish are.”

Social media isn’t really all that much different then traditional media. Just because its out there as a marketing option, it doesn’t always mean that its right for your company. Look at it this way, if you as a business owner listen to a particular radio station and you’re a twitter addict, it doesn’t always mean you’ll find your next big sale by running ads on that station and from people reading your tweets. If your target audience isn’t tuning into that type of music or knows what a re-tweet is, then you’ve wasted more then just your time. You’ve just wasted your marketing budget.

Think about it this way … what if you’re trying to catch one of those giant sailfish so you can stuff it and put it over your mantle. If you know anything about fishing then you wouldn’t waste your time driving your boat over to your local freshwater lake. Sailfish can only be found in saltwater in the ocean. And let’s define this even more … you’re not going to find them in just any ocean. They live in the Atlantic and Pacific in the warmer water regions like (drilling down even more) Florida, specifically the Florida Keys.

So to fulfill our quest for our stuffed sailfish, we need to book a trip to the Florida Keys and find the best charter boat to take us out into the ocean. And that’s how we fish where our fish are.

Now you’re probably asking, ‘that’s great information about how to catch a sailfish but how do I get more customers?’ I’m going to share with you some of the steps I take my clients through as we plan their marketing strategy using traditional marketing options and social networks.

Step 1: Indentify your target market – who are you trying to reach with your products and services? Take a look at some of my research for specific targets like Moms or Baby Boomers to give you an idea of what to look for when you start your fact-finding expedition.

Step 2: Take a look at their lifestyles – a study into the buying patterns of your target audience will unveil all sorts of great results to help you with your marketing plans. You’ll figure out what TV shows they’re watching and what social programs they’re using. For instance, are they watching American Idol and blogging like the Mommie target audience? Or are they listening to the oldies station and Facebooking to see what’s going on with their grandkids like the Baby Boomers?

Step 3: Define your message – now you know who they are and where they are spending their time, what can you say about your products/services that speaks to them? Are you speaking to their needs or just speaking over their heads and losing a chance to connect with them?

It sounds like a cliche to use this quote, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day – Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” but it can’t be further from the truth when it comes to planning your marketing strategy.

Let me know what happens when you follow the steps for your next fishing trip for your company or your clients. Will you be traveling to your local lake, the southern tip of the ocean or cruising the intercoastal?

Photo credit: Sailfish 010

Our premiere post is one that we saw on the Visit Orlando fan page. Check out this photo and see if you can figure out what it is … (and yes, I know you can go to the link to get the answer but try to make a guess before you cheat!)

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question. I’d have enough money to place an awesome Facebook ad campaign! But then, of course, I’d be asking myself, is this a good use of my new-found income? Am I going to see that elusive return on my investment (ROI)?

Time to put my research hat on and find out some answers. Just to give you all a mental picture, my research hat looks a lot like Gandolf’s the wizard from The Lord of the Rings series. Mostly because I’m a huge fan of the movies and if it can make Gandolf look wise, I can only imagine how I could rock a pointy hat to make me think I’ve gained some knowledge.

By now, most of us have heard of or have even placed a Google Adword campaign. We know the difference between a Google ‘organic’ search and one down the right side that’s been paid for to generate clicks to a company’s website. Like Google, Facebook has different types of ads that include the typical display ads (which appear to look like Google ads) and a new type of ad called Sponsored Stories where the Facebook users generate the ad’s content.

With over 800-gazillion people on Facebook, you’d think that this would be enough to convince everyone to work the concept of Facebook ads into their marketing budgets. My cool-looking inspired Gandolf hat research told me otherwise. While it’s a pretty basic program to setup your Facebook campaign, the click-through-results (CTR) results seem to be less clicks for more money then what you’d get from a Google campaign.

An independent analysis from Webtrends on more than 11,000 Facebook campaigns showed the average CTR for Facebook ads in 2010 was 0.051%. I learned this number is about half of the industry standard CTR of 0.1 percent. If a high CTR is one of your benchmarks for an ad campaign, then your company may want to make sure you’re using this type of marketing in conjunction with other Facebook strategies like contests and creating engaging content with a strong call-to-action.

Many of the Facebook ad success stories I found where due to the effectiveness of content of the ad (like the addition of images and the way the text was worded) combined with relevant and entertaining posts on their fan pages. The end result for most of these success stories were an increase in likes and traffic to their websites. Most people admitted it was hard to determine whether an increase in their sales came directly from the Facebook ads or if these folks were already fans on their Facebook pages.

While there were some similarities with the Google Adwords, I found there were also many significant differences. The costs of your ads on Facebook are built on a marketplace system like they are on the Google program. You pay based on either the number of times people see the ad or the number of times people actually click on it. The majority of people tended to choose the latter as it appeared to be more cost effective.

The biggest difference I found was how to target your ads. While Google appears to be mostly geo-location based, you were able to narrowly define your target with your Facebook ads. Facebook lets you pick and choose which groups to reach by creating a niche target. You can specify who you want to reach based on a user’s profile information, such as age, gender, location, relationship status and interests (the fan pages they like). You’re able to target people who are fans of your company’s Facebook page or friends of your fans. You can also advertise only to Facebook users who mention certain words in their profiles or status messages. Now we’re cooking with gas!

The takeaway from my research was the incredible information your company could gain from running a few Facebook ad campaigns. While I can’t guarantee your company will increase your sales just from the use of these ads, you will gain significant results from the targeting information you compile as you work through the process. Who wouldn’t want to get CTR results to help them clearly define their target market down to the age, gender and interests of their customers?

Now I’m off to do some more research … I’m really digging the hat and I need an excuse to keep it on for a few more hours.

Have you used Facebook ads for your company or for a clients? What were your results?

Photo credit: Gandalf the Grey

I joined in on an enthusiastic conversation last week about finding your voice. The post called Five Examples of Blogging Voices was wonderfully crafted by Jayme Soulati. She broke it down into five different styles (with some great blogger examples!) to give us some food for thought about how we fit into these personalities and how her examples could contribute to finding our voice.

It was certainly an eye-opening article (and don’t miss the comments below – the conversation between the bloggers will bring a smile to your face). It really hit home with me as one of the best explanations I’ve heard about finding your voice. After I let the words marinate with me for a few days, it finally occurred to me where I’ve heard this breakdown before. It was from the movie called The Breakfast Club.

The movie celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010. For those us raised in the 80′s, we can attest to the fact that the movie impacted our generation. It was one of the first films we had ever seen where they treated teens like adults and not just some Disney-esque version of what kids would do if they all spent a Saturday in detention.

I was 17 when the movie was released and I can clearly remember feeling a solidarity when we all watched the movie together at the theater. This movie represented our chance to show the world that teachers and adults were just seeing teens as how they wanted to and not for who we really were.

Circle back around to post with the examples of the blogging voices. When we think about finding our voice, we begin with this preconceived notion of who we think we should be. We think since we’re representing our company, we have to be reserved and just provide our readers with the many reasons why they should buy from us or pay for our services. We think we should hold back with our true personality because who would want to read something written with someone’s inner weirdness?

But The Breakfast Club teaches us that’s not the case when we attempt to figure out our voice. In the end of the movie, we see Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) “The Brain” as he writes the final essay the principal Mr. Vernon assigned them at the beginning of detention. Each of the students were asked to write a paper detailing “who you think you are.” Instead of each student submitting his/her own essay, Brian writes one letter from all of them.

In the end, the final letter challenges Mr. Vernon’s distorted judgments that he has about all of the teens. When we compare the movie to finding our voice, we realize that each of us has something that makes us unique within us to create our own touchpoints with our readers (or potential customers). I challenge you to read through Brian’s letter and think about his words as it relates to finding your voice.

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain …and an athlete …and a basket case …a princess …and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

Maybe we should all be required to write an essay answering ‘who you think you are’ before we start to blog.

Photo Credit: Duke University Library

The biggest thing that happened to our Campaign this month was our connection with the City of Orlando’s Public Affairs Director named Carson. When we contacted him about our Campaign, Carson emailed us back with this note:

“If you have not already made inroads to the folks at Discovery, you’re in luck. I lived in DC for many years and one of my friends worked as Anthony Bourdain’s field producer on the show.  So, I can certainly help get a message to their team.”

Holy crap! That led to about ten minutes of doing the ‘Elaine from Seinfeld’ dance around my office with the new official song for the Campaign, “Uh uh, uh uh, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!” (which is now a new requirement if you decide to do the Elaine dance in my office).

Our meeting with Carson went extremely well. The City of Orlando is backing us on our Campaign and Carson will be submitting our pitch directly to a field producer of No Reservations. I don’t think we could have ever imagined that an idea developed over lunch at 4 Rivers in Winter Park could have turned into this expanding grass roots effort from our community.

We had always hoped the Campaign Facebook fan page would be the catalyst to get us noticed but it seems the words I tell my clients about their marketing plans run true for our Campaign as well. We realized we needed a team of people to help us. We needed to develop a direction to reach our goals. Once we figured out our strategy, we started working on our pitch to include the best of the best in Orlando.

As we moved through this process, we realized we were not having a Kevin Costner moment. We had built it but they didn’t come – at least not until we started to send out our invitations to connect with our community.

The team we’ve pulled together includes our local food bloggers, some Orlando area restaurant owners and our latest contact, VP of Global Publicity of Visit Orlando. Our fans have reached out to us to help with restaurant ideas and other important ways to support our campaign. For this, we are so very grateful.

As I finally type this post out today, our Campaign invitations are continuing to go out. When we look at everything that has happened in the past few months and the people who we have met, all I can say is this, “Get ready Orlando, it looks like our city needs to gear up for one hell of a No Reservations party!”

If you haven’t joined our Campaign to Bring Bourdain to Orlando fan page – please click on this link and join our movement!

Photo credit: Sammo371

The Pinterest case study continues! As I stated in my first Pinterest post, my marketing ‘spidey-senses’ have been running on full force as I’m learning more about the latest social media obession Pinterest. I’m not going to pretend that I’m only using Pinterest for business and research for my clients. I’ve fallen down the rabbit holes as described in this post from my personal blog: Alice in Pinterest-land.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far … Pinterest has recently recently hit 10 million unique monthly views, which is faster then any other standalone site in US history (Techcrunch). What amazes me the most about their phenomenal growth is that people are spending more time on Pinterest then on Facebook.

Take a look at some of the latest stats about Pinterest from comScore, Techcrunch and Shareaholic:

• Pinterest users spend 15.8 minutes pinning while Facebookers spend approximately 12.1 minutes checking status updates and looking at their friend’s photos
• Pinterest drives more referral traffic then Google+, Linkedin and YouTube COMBINED
• Nearly 1/3 of all the users have an annual household income of $100k
• Almost 70% of the users are women with the largest demo group falling between 25 – 34
• The exact Pinterest demo is also the one that is the most valuable to mobile advertisers — young, upper-middle class and female (Flurry Analytics)

I don’t know about you but those statistics just blow me away! How can Pinterest NOT help a company increase their revenue? My research continued as I started to follow the top brands who were using Pinterest. Only one company – GE – followed me back. And then a couple of smaller companies started to follow me but I was looking for more then just a pinner follow click.

When I posted something funny in my Makes Me Smile board, one of the small companies commented on the pin. We engaged in a short conversation and learned a little bit more about each other. After this exchange, it made me wonder if the top brands were just using an intern in the building to upload their images. Most of these companies had discovered their Pinterest ‘voice’ but where was the engagement? The pinners were talking in their comments but where were the companies responding? They reply to their Facebook fans, what’s going on with their Pinterest pages?

What I found out was these companies who kept getting listed as the top Pinterest brands had figured out how to find creative ways to show how their products could fit in with the lifestyles of their target Pinterest audience. Their boards covered more topics then just showing off their products with beautiful photos.

As with any social media (or traditional media for that matter) marketing plan, there needs to be marketing strategy to close the deal and make the sales. I can’t say I found much of a strategy other then what boards to put up and what images to pin.

What I found the most interesting about Pinterest were the success stories of the small businesses using their pin-style boards. Stay tuned for the next installment of my Pinterest case study as I detail the success stories I found. I’ll share with you how your company can utilize their strategies to make Pinterest work for your company.

Is your company using Pinterest? How is this new social media program working for your brand?

Photo credit: Brechtbug