Breakdown Of Social Sharing By AddToAny

I agree, the growing trend is for people to continue sharing more content on social networks, yet you have to view these statistics with some skepticism, and consider how sharing should fit into your business.

1) AddToAny is only one of many social sharing service widgets available. Their results are likely not representative. For instance, this does not account for the many people who copy and paste urls when sharing.

2) Important to Marketers. This study doesn’t break down the type of information being shared. There’s a high probability that people are sharing news about Michael Jackson’s death, or Youtube videos of dogs doing back flips on Facebook, and not your case studies and blog posts. Whereas you’re likely to find more of the latter being shared on LinkedIn and Twitter.

How content is shared is ultimately influenced by your audience and the type of content.

Just for comparison, my last employer had much different stats compared to AddToAny’s report. Sharing via email, took place 86% of the time, with Facebook and Twitter rounding out the top 3. Our e-commerce business catered to older, small business owners with most email sharing being products, whereas our blog content received the majority of social media network shares.

Remember, people want to share content on their own terms, so you should provide different options. But just because Facebook is popular, doesn’t mean it will be the preferred method in how people would like to share your content.

Despite the wholesale move to join the online word of mouth cacophony, many marketers are still approaching social media from a flawed mindset. Thinking in terms of exposure, and reach they seek out big names like getting featured on Tech Crunch,  End Gadget or being reviewed by high profile bloggers like Pim Techamuanvivit and Susie Lau.

While I’d be ecstatic to have my product receive a glowing mention from a rock star in my specific niche, it’s not something I strive for with a single minded focus, and neither should you. A-list bloggers are showered with gifts, and products from marketers hoping for a review. Odds are you won’t be one of them. The fact is, I’d rather reach 500 low and medium level influencers in my niche than 0 stars.

The reality of plugging into word of mouth in the physical world, and on the web is recognizing it’s not the number of connections that matter, but how enthusiastic a person is toward a product or service. People who have a genuine interest possess the greatest influence, fortunately social media makes it easy to find them.

Photo credit inju

An answer in non-techie, laymens terms. Something my boomer parents would understand, well my mother definitely, pop on the other hand shuns computers so I guess he’s a lost cause.

Rather than create an explanation from scratch, I’ve posted an excellent video made by Lee and Sachi from Commoncraft. Plus the theme of the clip coincidentally gels with the fact that I just got back from a walk to the Abbots icecream shop. Enjoy the scoop!

Even so, I bet there’s a lot of nay sayers who doubt the value of this new media. For those of you who fall in this category, let me ask you two questions:

1. Are you looking for a better way to build relationships with your customers? Yes.
2. Is your personality an important ingredient in attracting and retaining customers? Yes.

Then consider social media. When you strip away the technological jargon it’s simply about putting yourself out there, with the goal of creating a meaningful, two way dialogue with your customers. You’re already doing this when you talk to a person over the phone or in person. Social media allows you to present your voice in the word of mouth conversations people are already having about your business online.

The real power of the medium is evident when it’s coupled with a clearly differentiated company, in an industry that has been slow to adopt the technology. Case in point, Greenwerks, a Chicago based contractor.

Greenwerks niche is green design, construction and retrofitting. To enhance their position as an eco-conscious the company website includes a blog providing examples of how the company minimizes their carbon footprint, in addition to presenting simple ways for you to lead an environmentally friendly life. The strategy is augmented with traditional avenues such as email marketing, attending green trade shows and events. Far from just presenting themselves as an environmentally conscious, the people at Greenwerks run their business true to that purpose. A crucial part of the mix, social media allows Greenwerks to lay bare their consistent actions, showing their authentic self and influencing the creation of a ‘green’ meme (association) tagged to their business.

Compared to other “green” contractors, Greenwerks has a well defined position that places it well ahead on the curve of eco-responsible companies.

I wonder if they drive bio-diesel trucks to work?

Update 5/24/08: I just learned that Greenwerks is going to be featured on Discovery Channel’s Renovation Nation. Filming began this month. Congradulations to Chris Campbell and everyone from Greenwerks! You can view their audition video here.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait…

Meatball Sundae Explained

photo courtesy of worth1000 If you’re familiar with Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae concept, then you understand by the title that this part of the project did not work out. I’ll delve into the why momentarily. First, let me explain the idea for those not familiar with it. Meatballs are your traditional businesses (in my case, plumbing wholesaler). Whereas your ice cream, hot fudge, and sprinkles are all the gooey, web 2.0 stuff, like Myspace, blogs, widgets, etc. Separately both are two great tasting ideas, however when you mix them without forethought you unfortunately end up with a Meatball Sundae.

While it’s easy to get enamored with the sweet whipped cream and cherries, they should only be used to enhance the products and services underneath. If hype is the driving motivator to use these tools then you’re doomed to failure. Like other mediums, social media should only be used to accomplish a clear goal.

Answering The Why

These are my ideas for why this experiment failed to meet my expectations.

• The platform I used is more suited for building member-centric communities, where the people in the community are the content creators. I set an unrealistic expectation that an older audience of construction contractors, who are busy running their businesses would have the time to generate content for a peripheral event in their lives.
• Being a year long promotion with an eventual end, there was no motivation for people to contribute. A network aimed at bringing together these professionals for trading ideas to improve their businesses would have faired better.

What To Do

What do I want to accomplish for the 2008 promotion? I need to keep our guests informed about the trip, and all the options available to them while being able to gather feedback from them over the course of the year. Since I’ve already established that the particular event combined with the lifestyles of my customers makes a member-centric community unsuitable, I will choose a content driven strategy for the social media part of the promotion.

The analytics data from the prior program supports my intent.  It’s apparent that those people using the old site relied more so on the forum and blog posts. They crave topical information to help them prepare for the trip, and learn about the activities available in the places they will be visiting.

The VP Supply Mayan Riviera blog is already putting the content driven strategy into practice.

Do you have any meatball sundae’s to share?

Compared to a standard website, social media is a different beast requiring its own set of metrics.A recent article on Website Magazine details what specific yardsticks you should be using to evaluate your web 2.0 marketing.

Metrics that are more important when measuring social media marketing include:

• RSS/newsletter subscribers
• amount of social bookmarks received
• activity of comments added to your blog
• number of new links secured by social media marketing
• monitoring the viral aspect — what blogs, forums etc are talking about you
• monitoring referring links
• monitoring brand/search saturation
• monitoring reach
• mood of conversational marketing
• monitoring engagement of site visitors
• tracking email usage (if implemented into campaign)

The article goes on to mention a number of free and subscription analytic services. However, it fails to mention Performancing Metrics/Clicky, which has the capability to measure many of the above metrics. I recently registered an account with P-Metrics and will be receiving their professional service plan free for 21-days. After that period you have the option of paying for a premium plan or using their free plan. For a paltry $23.99 per year you get so many additional features that are worth the investment.

What do people want when choosing an independent travel agent, rather setting up a trip with a large agency or going the self help route?

A tool I have in mind that will help the travel agent meet these needs is Ning, a social networking platform. Having used Ning to coordinate my company’s 180 person Caribbean cruise promotion, it has potential to drastically improve the travel agent – client interaction.

Personalization: People like to feel they’ve gotten special treatment. Make the network private, which will add an air of exclusivity. Along these same lines, you can set up separate groups within Ning, meaning you could have one group for the Johnson family vacation, and another for the 150 person corporate trip. Personalize the experience even more by posting a weekly blog for each mini-group that gives tantalizing glimpses of what they can expect on the vacation. As Louis Black says, “theres nothing better than living in the moment of anticipation.” Your job is to heighten this sensation.

Immediate Access: So you’ve given them your phone number , “call me whenever you have question.” Great, but people are not paying money to chit chat with you, rather they’re calling because you are a knowledge base. Share your knowledge and save yourself time to focus on more important tasks, add the commonly asked questions, and answers to the social network forum. Even better you can set the forum to send you email notifications of client comments, and reply near instantaneously using your blackberry.

Anal Attention To Detail: Ning lets its users set up individual profiles. On sign-up you can have them answer questions which would prove useful to you in setting up their trip. For example, you could ask their age, or if they smoke, etc. More importantly your clients can add unique content to their own profiles, which you should definitely read. So Mrs. Johnson added a picture of her beloved cat, Fluffy. Use this information to recommend a cat sitter while she goes on her week long cruise. Mrs. J will sure appreciate your attention to detail, giving you good word of mouth. As an aside, it’d be a nice little source of income if you and the cat sitter worked out a referral program.

Social networking using the Ning platform can definitely be a source of competitive advantage for the independent travel agent. Though I’ll stress that the tool is only as good as the person moderating it. Provide regular blog updates for mini-groups, search out You-Tube videos of the places they’ll be visiting and post these, respond promptly to comments,above all encourage user participation and the community you have created will flourish.