Interactive Trends

Are you engaging your audience?

2009-07-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

Is the web a place for entertainment or a place for information? The answer of course, is both. We go online to check our email, play some mind numbing game, check our bank account, look-up answers to mundane trivia, research products and services and of course keep up to date on all the latest in celebrity mishaps.

So then, why when it comes to online marketing do advertisers neglect so many mediums. Why are brands not entertaining while they are informing? There are literally dozens of ways to get your message across yet most advertisers utilize only a handful. The king of these as of late is SEM and SEO. Many advertisers we have spoken with over the past couple of years swear that SEM/SEO is the only online marketing they will do now, since it is the “only one that works”. They have tried the rest and they just don’t work as well. To that we say; of course not.

SEM is standard pull marketing, the consumer is coming looking for you when they are in the lower half of the buying funnel (another blog entry all together). They are ready - or getting pretty close - to buying a product and now they need to figure out where to get it. Or they need to do just a little bit more research before they can convince their wife that the big screen TV they bought 3 years ago is now out dated and nothing more than an oversize boat anchor.

So how do you get consumers to that end of the buying cycle? By getting your brand in front of them and relentlessly trying to convince them that when they need a new widget, that only ABC Widgets will do. There are a number of clichés for doing this, throwing a wide net, having a shotgun approach. But, remember; a cliché is such for a reason; it has some truth behind it. You rarely know who exactly your target is and where you are going to get them at their most influential. Sure we have demographics and personas and we have a good idea of our most common audiences, but in reality when it comes down to it, everyone is different and buys for different reasons.

For a hundred years Madison Avenue has been doing a fairly good job at this in traditional media. Some *ahem* very targeted magazine buys, some drive-time radio slots, a few spots during the hottest network shows and maybe some inserts in the local Sunday paper. The point is, offline, clients seem to get that they need to be in front of their prospects, no matter where the prospects may be.

But online, it’s different story.

YOU TOO CAN BE RICH! All you have to do is take this templatized shopping-cart-ready website and start selling all that crap in your garage. Don’t worry people are going to be coming in droves just to buy your collection of cat clocks with eyes that move on the chime.

The truth is, it’s never that easy. For the average product/brand just building a website is not going to get you too far. Building a mediocre website will more than likely only hinder your efforts. Online you need the total package. You need a top-end, stellar, effective website that gets your guests to do what it is you want them to do; and of course you need the traffic to actually visit the site.

Which leads me back to the question of how do you engage the consumer/client/prospect to not only remember your brand but also be so inclined as to visit your website or stop into your retail location and actually contribute to your bottom line?

Anyway you can.

Maybe it involves building a branding game that does nothing more than entertain someone for 5 minutes before they email it on to their co-worker. (Hey, it just went viral!) Perhaps it’s a microsite that has 25 product trivia questions. Or maybe your company has been around for ages so you build an interactive time-line of what the company was up to when Roosevelt first took office or Hawaii became the 50th state or the Berlin wall came down. Heck, maybe it’s a man-in-the-street video that tries to get off-the-cuff reactions to your product. The strategies and tactics are different for every product or service, but the idea is the same - a full campaign that evokes a strong association and emotion; “resonance”. Get in their heads and stay in there. And the only way you are going to be able to do that is by constantly and consistently getting your message in front of your audience where your audience is when they are receptive to your message.

So sure, be at the top of Google or Yahoo or Bing when they are looking for your product, but also be there before they even know they need your product. Give them a reason to interact with your brand, give them a reason to engage.

Antidote X, the full service Interactive marketing agency that maintains this blog can help you define your full interactive marketing campaign to develop destination sites that deliver conversion results, create online vehicles that engage your audience to interact with your brand and ultimately drive home the traffic. You can find contact information for Antidote X at http://www.antidotex.com/contact/.

Defining your Social Media Brand

2009-03-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

Would it be wrong to have the inaugural post of InteractiveTrends.com be on the subject of social media? It may be wrong since having a blog is no longer a trend, but rather a necessity. To that end, this article is not a conversation on do you need social networking or not; we know you do. It is a conversation on how do you come across to your following and establishing your brand presence on the social media sites.

Along with the need for a blog, comes the need for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the plethora of other social networking sites. The absence of establishing a presence on these sites is becoming increasingly noticeable by the everyday web visitor. “If you’re not there, you don’t exist” or at minimum, your existence is perceived as somewhat less important.

With the efforts of the openID initiative and cross site publishing and content sharing, maintaining your social presence is becoming easier than ever. However, there are some tricks to figure out and before you venture down the social media path, you should ask yourself a few questions.

Before you begin, ask yourself if your social media presence is intended to represent yourself or your company. Establishing some basic rules of engagement now will save you the time and headaches associated with trying to separate your identities later. To help you determine your Social Media Brand identity run through the following exercise.

Decide what type of content you plan on posting

Who will you invite to be your social network friends and what are they interested in?

Who will you accept invitations from and will you want them reading your posts?

Does it matter?
Is it ok if your business following knows that you got wasted last night and puked on the curb outside Walgreens? If that is ok, then maybe a single social network presence is fine. If it does matter, consider having separate accounts for your social life and your professional life.

Do your friends and family want to constantly see what you are doing at work? Are they sick of hearing about your passion for your business? If so, you can either consider separate profiles or you could consider getting new friends.

Understand the purpose of each social networking tool and how all the tools you plan on using interact with each other.

According to Twitter, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

According to Facebook, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”

YouTube simply states “Broadcast Yourself”

LinkedIn: “Over 35 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities”

There are some basic etiquette rules you should follow. The first rule is “Don’t be annoying” If you tweet (Twitter post) every time you blow your nose or wipe your ass, people are going to stop listening. There must be value in what you have to say. Everyone is following many others and the sheer number of updates to view are overwhelming. Make yours matter. If your followers have to scroll through the 15 updates you posted as you recapped your day in real time, they stop paying any attention to you. When you do have something of value that they may be interested in, it’s too late; they have already tuned you out. In fact, you may get removed or blocked.

With all the interaction now available between many of the social networking sites, it is easy to have your Tweets show on your Facebook wall or your LinkedIn profile, but do they belong there? If someone views your professional LinkedIn profile, do you want them to know that you “got up late, heading to office now after I stop for coffee”? If you post a picture of your drunk friend wearing your other friends bra on the outside of his AC/DC classic t-shirt, is it ok that a conservative prospect formed a first impression that you will never know about?

If you are passionate about your religious or political believes, consider having separate indentities so you avoid alienating your potential prospects or existing clients. Don't supress your passions, just use common sense when deciding the platform for your passion.

Don’t use the social media tools for what they are not intended for. Having a conversation with your buddy on Twitter with comments like “No sh*t, me 2” provides little value to your following. Twitter was not designed to be an online chat; take the conversation offline or to an online resource intended for this.

The answers to how you leverage the social media tools lies within you, your business, your types of services and your client base. If you are known for being that crazy creative director that no one understands, but you do great work, perhaps this is exactly the impression you want to leave behind – the crazier the better.

To summarize, regardless if you are an individual or a company, the first step in establishing any social media presence is to define your Social Media Brand. You must know who you are, think about the take away and then hold true to your brand. If you have decided to be a company, don’t submit reply posts that do not reflect the attitude of the company; you must resist it at all costs because once your social media brand is diluted with your personal opinions and comments, have fun separating them.

Antidote X, the full service Interactive marketing agency that maintains this blog can help you define your Social Media brand or establish and execute a Social Media corporate strategy. You can find contact information for Antidote X at http://www.antidotex.com/contact/.

Welcome

2009-03-14T17:48:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Interactive Trends