Marketing, social media, communications resources

I've collected a list of online resources and thought I'd share. Let me know if you have other great ones to add.

Marketing Communications

http://www.marketingprofs.com/

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/01/understanding_t.html

http://www.mathmarketing.com/hugh-macfarlane (funnel marketing)

http://www.bcama.com/

http://www.womma.org/main/

http://www.iimaonline.org/

www.verticalresponse.com (email service)

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/charts (email service and email marketing benchmarks)


Social Media

http://mashable.com/

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/

http://www.briansolis.com/ (PR 2.0)

www.hootsuite.com (for Twitter)

http://beth.typepad.com/ (not for profits and social media)


Monitoring

http://www.google.com/analytics/

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal (keywords)

www.socialmention.com (free)

http://www.radian6.com/

http://ca.cision.com/

www.vocus.com

www.leadlander.com

http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/

www.technorati.com

http://news.google.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com

www.icerocket.com

www.blogpulse.com



Communications

http://www.cprs.ca/

http://www.iabc.com/

http://www.ragan.com

http://www.htce.org/


Community Relations

http://www.cbsr.ca/

http://www.imaginecanada.ca/


Research

http://www.mustelgroup.com/

http://www.legermarketing.com/eng/

http://www.ipsos.ca/


Setting up as a Consultant in BC

http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/

Email Marketing Tips

I'm currently working on email marketing campaigns using Vertical Response, integrated with Salesforce, and found that it is important to remember the basics including what your purpose is for the email. From the book "Email Marketing An Hour a Day" they talk about the 5 types of emails:

 

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion
4. Product Usage
5. Retention and Loyalty

 

Awareness -- purpose is to ID interest -- use ad type placement in email

 

Consideration -- purpose is to accelerate interest and qualify -- use way to capture opt-in

 

Conversion -- to move from marketing to sales funnel after getting a buying signal -- use click-to-call or request demo

 

Product Usage -- purpose is to drive engagement with brand -- use cross and up-sell offers

 

Retention and Loyalty-- to deepen relationship -- use value added info (tips, e-newsletters)

 

 =======

 

Remember when your approach to email is different depending upon your brand awareness.

 

70% of business emails are opened and read within 3 hours of receipt.

 

Segment as much as possible and track stats (received, opened, clicked, conversion, bounced, unsubscribe).

 

HTML or text? Depends on your audience and what they expect. Youtube generation wants design and humour; boomers want the facts. Research your audience before you email ... buy, source free online, or survey.

 

And don't forget to comply with CAN-SPAM laws 

5 marketing communication tips

1. CRM system like Salesforce.com are fantastic systems for tracking leads, prospects, sales and all related communications through the funnel.
2. Email marketing programs like Vertical Response or Mail Chimp are easy to use and have templates and analytics to view %open, bounced and unsubscribe rates.
3. docmetrics provides tracking PDF tool to get stats to help with lead generation.
4. White papers are great “call to action” in direct marketing campaigns – whether email or mail. To share content there is Creative Common.
5. Leadlander gives you information about who is accessing your website.

Learnings from National PR Conference

I attended this week PR National Conference here in Vancouver, BC at the Westin Bayshore hotel. I attended many sessions and helped organize the 80 fabulous volunteers.Highlights for me were ...

Brian Solis talking about social media and the new world of PR.

“Social Media is bigger than simply integrating a Blogger Relations branch to your PR strategy. It’s an opportunity to engage directly customers and peers who either purchase or recommend the decisions of others. ... The new world of influence demands customer empathy, evangelism, passion, expertise, and knowledge – everything else is disposable and takes away from your focus and potential.”

• Download his entire post related to his presentation The State of PR, Marketing, and Communications: You are the Future.

Maple Leaf Food’s VP Communications Jeanette Jones had a good presentation about their listeria crisis last year. I wonder if they would have had such a positive rebound in customer purchases and reputation if they didn’t have such a great CEO spokesperson.

Lessons learned:

• Accept responsibility. Have CEO face of company.
• Lead with facts and be open. http://www.mapleleafaction.com/
• Have communication vehicles in place such as CEO weekly note, employee conference calls, external blogs (this one decreases reliance on media to disseminate info)
• Use social media such as YouTube as well as TV
• Use research to improve communications such as consumer polling
• Don’t over think communications and act immediately
• Ensure bilingual capabilities
• Leverage external experts and have relationships built now
• Maintain communication post crisis – consumers don’t want to forget and nor should the company

Three members from PR Global Alliance, Dan Tisch (Cdn), Paul Mylrea (UK) and John Paluszek (US) talked about the future of PR.

Dan’s points were that PR professionals need to:

• elevate the profession raising standards, sharing knowledge
• dig deeper in the what, why, how of mass culture and
• build business literacy
• co-create messages and content with citizens now; interact 2-way

Dan said in another panel that Canada on the global stage has reputation of the ability to listen and adapt and not do the one campaign worldwide approach (like the US has a reputation to do).

5 step plan for Social media with Maggie Fox. Her presentation style is very conversational and she has a great sense of humour. I would have liked to see more case studies but she did provide some good information about social media.

1. Listen – research the online communities and find out what they are talking about
2. Content – what content gets shared in the community and what doesn’t
3. Technology – what are they using, where are they, monitor conversations
4. Metrics – unique monthly visits to website, etc.
5. Managing risks – create a risk management plan and assign a likelihood ranking

And lastly make sure you share results formally and informally with internal teams. Common misconception that social media is free. It is not free when you consider the time needed to make it work.

Social Media Tips

Social Media Tips

Marketing communications is about two-way engagement and creating conversations. Have a strategy, framework and commit to an ongoing dialogue.

1. Find out what your brand keywords are. Search on Google and your top 10 “hits” in all areas are your brand. List out your top 10 keywords. Use these keywords in all communication. To use keywords that get searched more often check out Google Adwords. Go to Technorati and find out what is being said about you. Sign up to monitor what others are saying with Google alerts, Tweetlater, Tweetbeep.
2. Get your online domains. Sign up for accounts on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter to avoid others using your name. Even if you don’t know what you are going to do yet get your domains now.
3. Use Tweetdeck on your desktop to manage twitter conversations.
4. With marketing and communications, link to videos and photos to make it more visual and interesting. Use Youtube and Flickr.
5. Have a blog or online forum and build a community.
6. Advertise with Google adwords and Facebook for ROI.
7. Be authentic and real as the online community sees right through spin and instantly you’ve lost credibility. Some people are ok about talking about what they had for lunch and others aren’t. Be your brand and personality and engage with your communities.
8. If you are using news releases, use social media releases and connect with bloggers and online sites. Marktetwire, CNW, PitchEngine (free), PRweb are a few resources for this.
9. Have a blog and online policy for employees. Some companies, like Zappos, encourage employees to have Twitter accounts and others encourage participating in blogs and on Facebook. Employees like customers are your community and your brand. Connect with them. See samples of blog policies.
10. Monitor and measure your objectives. Use free services like Google Analytics, TweetStats. Or if you want to pay use Radian6.

Seeking contract positions to help you define your brand personality, build your profile, engage with communities and manage issues.