For smaller organizations and businesses, brand awareness can be one of the greatest marketing challenges. After all, increasing brand awareness has traditionally meant spending money on advertising. And buying media isn’t cheap.

Volume up

Originally uploaded by mikelao26

Of course, these days, with social media marketing, brand awareness can be achieved without spending money on advertising, though you may have to spend money on getting your social media content created and posted. However a blog post last infinitely-those magazine ads are good until the magazine lands in the trash can.

So, from my forthcoming online version of the Social Media Marketing Journey workshop, here are 5 social media tactics for increasing brand awareness:

1. Social Media Monitoring + Commenting - Find out where the conversations are online that are relevant to your product or service, and get involved.

2. Blogging + SEO - When you combine the power of Wordpress plugins such as the All-In-One SEO pack with the ability to literally “share” your expertise (with share widgets) while building relationships online, I think the blog is one of the best social media marketing tactics one can employ to increase brand awareness.

3. Crowdsourcing - While crowdsourcing generally begins with people who are already aware of your brand, it spreads if you mix it up with other tactics, like having a contest built around reader votes.

4. Branded widgets - Granted there might be some coding that has to happen to create your own widget, but create a widget that is unique and useful, and you can end up in all kinds of places online.

5. Blog trackbacks - While trackbacks can be a little tricky, they can be a great way to get some extra awareness out there regarding your blog, especially if pinging back to high traffic blogs.

These are just a few of the social media marketing tactics I’ll discuss in my online version of The Social Media Road Trip Workshop which I’m currently working on. Let me know if interested by leaving a message here.

I started working a ton of hours in July for a local client and really felt too overwhelmed to blog through the summer. Plus I had some other stuff going on in my life. I should have given an update on my blog to at least fill you in, but I really didn’t plan to be away from here so long.

Parmiter Antiques Southsea Luggage

Originally uploaded by geishaboy500

Then at the end of October, I went to work full-time for the headquarters of a global non-profit in their marketing communications department as a copywriter. Very excited about it and love the new gig.

Anyway, my goal for 2010 is to get back on track with regular blogging as my life is settling down again. Thanks for coming back to my blog.

By Kevin McIntosh

Looks like Social Media is getting closer and closer to Santa in terms of having some influence around the holidays.

ComScore Research in Virginia released a report from a survey earlier in December that revealed holiday shoppers were relying more on social media for recommendations on holiday purchases in 2009.

According to the report, 28 percent of those who had begun their holiday shopping this season indicated that social media had influenced their purchases.

Consumer-generated product reviews were the most common form of social media influence (13 percent), followed by an expert product review (11 percent).

Facebook fan pages attracted seven percent of respondents who said they’d followed brands on Facebook to take advantage of special offers and deals. Another 6 percent said they have been influenced by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product.

Five percent of respondents indicated they had followed a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals, while 3 percent said that a friend’s “tweet” about a product influenced their purchase behavior.

Who knows, maybe next year kids will just tweet their wish lists to Santa.

zoltar speaks!

Originally uploaded by House Of Sims

I love the idea of using paid search marketing for testing a marketing campaign with new audiences.

Whether testing headlines, visuals, promotional offers, whatever, through Paid Search, you can do so much in so little time and with a relatively small budget. And best of all, you can learn a whole lot. Theoretically, you can keep tweaking, testing and measuring until your heart is content.

Paid search is great for A/B testing or multi-variate testing.

1. The ability to quickly and cost-efficiently launch your trials.

2. The ability to quickly try different A/B tests or more complicated multivariate tests, especially if using a tool such as Ion Interactive’s LiveBall application.

3. Measurability through metrics tools. Obviously, reasons 1 and 2 would be meaningless without the added functionality of all the metrics reports than can be generated through Google Adwords, or whatever tools your online ad network provider offers.

4. Low cost for production and media compared to more traditional channels.

These are the top reasons that I can think of. If you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them.

Kevin McIntosh is a marketing consultant in the Nashville, TN market. His specialties include branding, creative development and social media marketing.

Universities are taking advantage of the opportunity to use Twitter to promote everything from campus events to news and links to press releases related to current news items affecting the respective campuses.

Here are just a few of the universities taking advantage of Twitter:

TWITTER USER NAME – UNIVERSITY

MarquetteU – Marquette University

IUBloomington – Indiana University

princeton – Princeton University

EmoryUniversity – Emory University

Harvard – Harvard University

AuburnU – Auburn University

Stanford – Stanford University

TuftsUniversity – Tufts University

templeedu – Temple University

uiowa – University of Iowa

Is your university on Twitter but not listed above? Let me know and I’ll add it.

5 Ways A Social Media Program Can Help Your Church. This is a free PDF and can be downloaded by clicking here.

NEW: Online 1-hr. mini-workshop-$99*. “Where In The Church Am I?”

For mini-workshop details, click here.

Photo originally uploaded by SOCIALisBETTER

Is there a formula that tells you if it’s time for your brand to engage in social media marketing?

By Kevin McIntosh

If you know your audience is online and you’re wondering if social media marketing is for you, here are 10 questions you might ask yourself to see if you’re ready for the social media marketing journey.

1. Am I ready to participate in conversations with my audience even if the conversations aren’t aimed at driving an immediate sale?

Social media marketing differs in traditional marketing in that it’s less about “selling” and more about building relationships through online conversations and sharing of information. You’ll need to accept this truth if you want to increase your chances for success with social media marketing. The good news is, building relationships means building trust. And building trust with customers is more important than ever.

2. Am I ready to to let my audience have more and more control of my brand?

Once your brand is out there, you give up control. People can comment on it, and dice and slice your content anyway they want. However, that can be a good thing. In the process, what you learn can help you push your brand where it needs to go to be more successful. And the truth is, it’s already out of your control. People may be doing all of the above already. It’s just that with social media marketing, you’ll be aware of it.

3. Am I ready to listen to the opinions and ideas of my audience to truly learn from them and in that process, actually let their ideas impact my product / service?

Related to question number 2. If you’re learning from your audience, are you willing to implement what you learn into your marketing or operations to make improvements that better fit audience trends? The ultimate result is that you’ll create brand advocates who become your virtual marketing and PR team, telling others about your brand.

4. Can I see value in any other metrics other than actual sales, as long as the metrics indicate a trend of people moving closer to the sale?

For example, can  you see the ROI in changing an influencer’s sentiment about your brand? As stated in question 1, conversations in social media shouldn’t be aimed at making an immediate sale. So your metrics reports may show encouraging data that indicates that more and more people are moving closer to the sale, but just haven’t fully converted. Depending on what you’re selling, the process can take time. But with social media monitoring and other tools, you can measure results to see what impact your efforts are making before the sale and to see if you’re moving closer to that objective.

5. Am I OK with making mistakes and learning from them?

A while back, I was watching an online presentation by Charlotte Li of Forrester Research and author of the social media book, Groundswell. She made it clear that in social media marketing, you will make mistakes. I’ll add that the truth is, mistakes are made in all forms of marketing. But what makes social media marketing different is that your audience can easily remind you and others of your mistakes. In other words, if you posted some of your promotional materials online for viewers to comment on, you’d likely hear the truth that your promotional ideas may not be all that great. Still, when you use social media marketing to let your audience guide your marketing, the mistakes can still be minimal.

6. Am I ready to devote resources (i.e. employees, time and money) to a continual social media marketing program for at least an extended trial period?

Done correctly, social media marketing can be time intensive. However, advantages like no costs for media and the value of leveraging online word-of-mouth to your advantage can be well worth the time required. 

7. Am I ready to think about social media strategically, versus simply looking at all the cool, shiny tools?

If you simply focus on something like, “Setting up a Facebook page” or posting a YouTube video, you’ll likely be disappointed with the results. Social media is a strategic process that uses tools to accomplish specific objectives. The good thing though, is that there is a method to the madness.

8. Do I appreciate the value of identifying and engaging with a single person who can influence dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people in their purchase and brand behavior?

Because of the exponential power of influence, 10 pairs of eyeballs looking at your content in a social media context can have a lot more impact than 100 pairs of eyeballs looking at your content in other marketing channels.

9. Do I appreciate the value of being able to change attitudes and beliefs about my brand?

Sometimes, simply changing the attitudes and beliefs of an audience can be the biggest hurdle in converting them into customers. Social media marketing can be a great way to do that simply because you can often pinpoint those with the wrong attitudes and beliefs and with social media, you can engage with them before they spread their false ideas to others.

10. Do I believe that the cost of NOT participating in social media is greater than the cost of participating in social media?

Or to put it another way, is the cost of letting people say whatever they want about your brand online greater than the cost of defending your brand? Is the cost of learning what it would take to get people to spread the word about your brand greater than the cost of continuing to use traditional paid media?

Those are some of the more important questions I think marketers should consider when trying to decide if they’re ready for social media marketing. Any other questions you can think of?

-Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh lives in Nashville and has worked on the marketing campaigns of over a dozen Fortune 500 brands. His workshop, “The Social Media Marketing Journey” shows companies how to use social media marketing to accomplish a wide range of objectives.

Showing off my copywriting skills a bit

Sometimes, I think we can get all caught up in the seriousness of information exchange and such with social media marketing and using all the buzz words like “Listening” and “Conversations.”

So the promo image I created above (thanks to a great photo by Jimmy_Joe on Flickr) is my little exercise this morning to lighten things up a bit as I’m working on my presentation, “The Social Media Marketing Journey” to document my social media marketing process for clients and prospects. I guess this is me being “Transparent” and “Authentic.”

-Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh has 20 years marketing and branding experience. He shows companies how to use branding and social media to build digital word-of-mouth. He lives in the Nashville market.

Photo by kevindooley

Summary:

Business Is More Competitive Than Ever

Customers Are Spending More Time With Social Media

64% Of Best In Class Companies Plan To Spend More On Social Media Marketing In 2009 Than In 2008

To Compete, Businesses Must Take A Fresh Look At Their Marketing Strategies And Channels

Today I was in the small town where I grew up. I come here about once every 6 weeks or so. For some reason, the only place I wanted to visit today was the city park where all the baseball fields are located.

I first stopped at the park on the hill. That’s where it all started. Farm League. I played on that diamond from ages 6 until about age 10. It seemed so big back then. Today, it just seemed like a small yard.

Down the hill from that is the town’s Little League diamond. That’s where I played until age 13. It’s a bigger park of course.

And then right across from that is the big park. The Pony League and Colt League field. That’s where I played until I retired from baseball at the ripe old age of 16.

As I thought about the three parks being so close together, what amazed me was the differences in the level of play from one field to the next. The level of competition kept getting tougher and tougher each year.

As boys, we were all getting more skilled at the game. We were developing our hand-eye coordination as well as our abilities to focus on the game. We were getting stronger each year.

By Pony League and Colt League, we were starting to develop our muscles and strength, so we were hitting balls 3 times the distance that we could hit them in Farm League. And the pitches were coming at us about 3 to 6 times faster, I’d guess.

So the bats we swung were bigger and heavier. Even the basic design in some of the aluminum bats was changing.

Business: It’s A Whole New Ball Game

Those 3 baseball fields remind me of business and marketing. It’s more competitive now than ever. The competition is getting stronger. And the speed at which things happen is faster than ever.

And just like it would have been naive for me to have used the same equipment in Colt League or to have relied on the same basic strategies that I had relied on in Farm League, I think it’s just as naive for businesses today to simply rely on the same marketing tools and strategies that they’ve relied on in the past. Sooner or later, you have to roll out some new equipment and strategies.

The world is changing. That world includes the people who are your customers and your competitors.

Your customers and your competition are relying more and more on different types of media than they were even 2 years ago. In particular, they’re spending more time with social media.

According to a recent study titled, “The ROI On Social Media Marketing” by The Aberdeen Group, 63% of best-in-class companies plan to increase their spending on social media marketing in 2009. Those are businesses that realize the game is changing.

Twitter for example was just launched in the spring of 2007. Today, it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Businesses are starting to realize the importance of Twitter as a marketing channel. With a 600% growth rate in 2008, Twitter now has around 4M-5M users, 70% of whom joined in 2008. And an estimated 5-10 thousand new Twitter accounts are opened per day

Facebook just added its 200th million user. Mind you, Facebook has been around only since it began as a college project back in 2003. And the world is gaining Internet access at a fast pace, as well, a 342 percent increase from 2000-2008, as over 1.6 billion people now have Internet access.

Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone on Facebook or Twitter is in their twenties or younger. 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older. You’ll now find everyone from engineers to doctors on both of these social networks.

What are people doing on these networks? They’re having conversations related to brands, business and much more. As you may have seen, they’re having a lot of trivial conversations. But they’re also having a lot of meaningful conversations. They’re sharing ideas and information. They’re asking others for product and service recommendations.

Businesses that want to compete realize that when the game changes, they have to change with it. That doesn’t mean waiting for the economy to get to a point where the same old strategies and marketing channels will work like they used to. But rather, going where the conversations are taking place, listening, engaging and connecting. Now.

It’s a whole new game. The question is, are you willing to step up to the plate and think differently about your marketing?

-Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh has 20 years experience in marketing and branding. He has worked on the marketing campaigns of over a hundred brands including over a dozen Fortune 500 brands. He shows businesses how to differentiate from their competition through a combination of traditional and new media channels.

Will It Blend?

In late 2006, Utah-based Blendtec spent around $50 to launch a series of videos in which the company CEO, Tom Dickson, does a simple product demonstration of the Blendtec brand home and commercial blenders. He uses their blenders to grind everyday household objects including golf balls, soft drink cans, a Hannah Montana doll and an iPhone.

Within 5 days, over 6 million visitors had landed on the company’s website.

“Lately, I’ve been feeling a need to get back to my manly roots,” Dickson says in the opening of one of the videos at the WillItBlend.com micro-site for Blendtec. “So I decided to build myself a man cave to relax and unwind,” he adds.

Next, Dickson takes a collection of objects that just don’t fit in a man cave and tosses them into the 1500 watt blender. Moments later, he has blended a mixture of a lava lamp, a Hannah Montana doll, a raspberry wine cooler bottle and a serving of quiche.

It’s a stunt that would make Ron Popeil jealous and Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor proud.

The short, quirky videos are entertaining and fun. And also a powerful demonstration of the product. In fact, the videos have contributed to a 6x increase in sales as of August 2008, thanks mostly to millions of viewings at YouTube.

In addition to gaining pop-culture celebrity status over the Internet, Dickson has even appeared as a guest on The Today Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

While my suspicions are that the man cave video segment may have required some special editing to actually blend all of the ingredients, it is apparent from some of the other videos that these are heavy duty blenders. In other words, if a Blendtec blender can’t blend it, you’d don’t need to drink it