How to Grow Your Online Community

January 27, 2015February 20, 2015 codyhulseyblogshootsuite, marketing, social media, social media management3 Comments

Whenever I view a blog, I like to feel captured, and feel as if I must finish reading the text in its entirety. I really love articles and blogs that make me feel like I am a more intelligent individual once I have completed the reading. That is my goal while typing out these blog posts. I want you as a reader and potential blogger to trust that when you visit my site, you are going to leave feeling like a marketing expert. I also like to incorporate humor as much as possible, because why not?

In this blog post I am going to talk about social media management. Social Media is awesome and booming. If you have not read the post that I created last week, please do. I packed in a bunch of valuable information that I believe is quite powerful and will be beneficial to your company (or for personal use). But this week I am covering social media management and the importance of growing your online community, the do’s and don’ts of social media etiquette, Klout, and Tumblr.

I did some research on a social media management website by the name of, HootSuite. Hootsuite is pretty radical. You can monitor all of your social media platforms in one place, schedule when to post things, check out what people are saying in your communities, get certified in social media management, and much more. If this is your first time hearing about HootSuite, then I encourage you to check it out (after you have read this blog post of course).

Growing your online community

As you probably know, an online community is a group of people rallying around a shared, common interest, value, or goal. This community can take place on any social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

When you invest time into your community, it benefits it your company in many ways…

It allows you to build deep relationships with people who are in your industry, share interests in products, services, or expertise.
When you add value to your community, it creates brand loyalty among your community. They feel like you have invested your time into them, so they want to return the favor.
Don’t frown upon negative feedback. All feedback is good feedback. This gives you a chance to fix the problem or at least apologize for that problem. A lot of the time the customer just wants to be heard. They want to know that you are truly sorry for whatever happened.
Engage in conversation with them. When you interact with your community, they love it! When A$AP Rocky starts responding to his followers on Instagram, his fans go nuts. It becomes a huge discussion and everyone tunes in.

Below is A$AP Rocky. He is a pretty cool dude, and will be releasing his sophomore album this year (album title TBD).

When you are growing your community it is important for your brand to have a personality that is consistent. No one wants to interact with brand that is bi-polar. It could be entertaining from an outsiders perspective but it would not be too inviting for the people who would want to interact with you as a brand.

Leverage your community. You can use this community as a way to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your company. A way to do this is by having quizzes. Quizzlet offers great survey systems that are quite easy to use, and offer lots of user-customization. Ask good questions, and record the data. You can use reverse innovation to figure out what your company should invent next. Or even having a net promoter score system where you ask a simple question like, “Would you recommend our company to a friend or family member”, they would then rate the company on a 1-10, where 10 is highly likely, and 1 is not likely at all. The world is yours.

Engage with influences and advocates. If you are able to get in contact with an influencer, then you are golden. For instance, when Kanye West co-signs clothing brands and wears them around town, that clothing brand blows up. All of their clothing sells out faster than you can say, “Yeezus”. Find influencer’s in your community. One way to do this is through Facebook Search Graph. This is a very interesting tool that I had no idea existed until I researched Hootsuite’s website. Essentially what you can do is, type into the search bar, “Bloggers who like Supreme”. Then it will list every blogger that likes the clothing brand Supreme. You can use this to your advantage. Find influencers that have liked your brand and reach out to them. Don’t be annoying though and expect them to promote your brand for free, a lot of the time you will have to entice them in some way. Give them something for free, or pay them!

Brand advocates can be just as good as influencers. Brand advocates are people who love your brand, and talk about it on social media. It is important to give these people recognition. Give them a favorite, or even reply to their tweet explaining that you appreciate their support. This will build a relationship with them and most likely get really excited that you communicated with them. When people who I follow get re-tweeted or mentioned by someone famous they tweet instantly right after something along the line of, “@KANYEWEST JUST MENTIONED ME”. Interact with your brand advocates, it pays off in the short and long run.

You want to acquire followers that are going to engage with you. You don’t want a ton of followers that never mention you, or comment on your posts. I always find it funny when I stumble upon someone’s Instagram account and they will have 12k followers but only 50 likes on each photo. They either bought those followers, or they post content that sucks.

If you find that a lot of your target audience is not on social media, reach out to them offline. A good way of doing this is by interacting with customers and asking them to follow them on Facebook. This might spark their interest into setting up an account, and when they tell people why they decided to get on Facebook, they will say because of your brand, and in return check you out. Another way to reach that community that is not online is through events. When you are at trade-shows or farmers markets, talk to your community. Bring them to the world of social media. You can even host contests to entice them to join Facebook. For instance, when I first made Bellingham Marine an Instagram account, we hosted a contest. This contest was for the first 50 followers. If you were among the first 50, then you got a free prize. This triggered their curiosity and made them sign up for Instagram and follow Bellingham Marine.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Etiquette

Be yourself. As cheesy as that sounds, it’s really true. Don’t feel like you have to change the way you communicate. But at the same time, be mindful of your audience. You might not want to get too comfortable and post pictures of you and your friends partying on the weekend.

Be Transparent. Everything that you post online is forever available. My Mother always told me, “If you would be embarrassed of it being on the front page of the NY Times, then don’t post it”. This is important, especially for a business.

Play by the rules. It is a public environment and you don’t want to annoy people. Be conscious of what you are posting and don’t over post. Don’t forget the 80/20 rule. Also check out the rules on Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Your company probably has rules about social media, so make sure to be up-to-date with those as well.

Listen Frequently and Engage. Listen to your community. Converse with your community, this is a great way to get your voice out there, especially if you want to display authority on a given subject. Consumers love and trust brands that display authority. Figure out what they like, and you can use that as a way to market to them

Be Respectful. Miscommunication is not uncommon on social media. I can be very sarcastic at times and find myself refraining from using it on social media. It can be hard to tell if someone is sarcastic online, even over text message. You want to remain courteous. If you are not, you can come off as cyber bullying. This would be a nightmare for a brand, and could create a community that would do everything they can to make sure that you don’t stay in business.

Do you have Klout?

Klout is pretty cool. It is a service that measures how influential you are online. It basically collects all the engagement you get from your social media platforms and rates your on a 1-100 scale. For instance, the image below is a Klout score of President Obama and Justin Bieber. Obama and Bieber are very influential people offline, and online.

Klout can benefit you in two ways:

Klout is a great way to measure what content resonates with your audience. This is useful because you can figure out what content gets you the most engagement.
Klout does a thing called, “Klout-put”. Klout-put puts you in contact with companies that want influential people using their products and basically gives them free merchandise. For instance, RedBull gave me a free subscription to their RedBulletin, because of my Klout score.

Storytelling on Tumblr with Ari Levine

Tumblr is booming as a social media platform. Hootsuite got in contact with Ari Levine, who is the Brand Strategist for Tumblr. Mr. Levine talked about Tumblr and why it is so great. I am going to summarize some of the key takeaways for you…

Tumblr is all about creativity. When you design your site, you have the freedom to do whatever you want. Creatives love Tumblr, because it allows them to explore and showcase their creativity skills.
Experiment and have fun with it. Mr. Levine thinks creating GIF’s are a great way to do this.
Tumblr users are highly engaged. On average, a person who goes on their dashboard to view pictures, GIF’s, videos, and etc, spends 18 minutes. Mr. Levine compared this example to TV. Tumblr users would rather spend 18 minutes online then watching a TV-show.
You create an audience, and you are part of an audience. Find people who love the same things you do, and use that to your advantage.

That concludes this blog post. I hope it was very engaging, and you feel like you are ready to grow your social media community, practice proper social media etiquette, boost your Klout score, and engage on Tumblr. Until next time…

The Three-Headed Dragon of Content Marketing

January 20, 2015February 20, 2015 codyhulseyblogscontent marketing, marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, Smarketing, social media, social media marketing3 Comments

Recently I was stumped on what to receive from my parents for Christmas. I was having the hardest time deciding whether to get money which I could put towards rent, or a pair of headphones. Of course, I picked the headphones. But this didn’t happen until I performed extensive research on what was the best headphones out on the market. It first sparked my interested when Kanye West’s Creative Director, Virgil Abloh posted a pair of headphones on his Instagram page. Prior to seeing this post, I was interested in some over the ear headphones, but I couldn’t figure out where to start to find the right pair. I have owned five different types of Beats By Dre in the past, and wanted something new, reliable, and had a sense of authenticity. Mr. Abloh posted about these headphones with a caption of, “another unboxed. I lose an average of 4 of these per year. I can’t be the only one. @atrak? @diplo? Aguillaumeberg? @_benjib?”. I read that caption and my frame of reference switched from social to prospective buyer. My instant thought was, “Who makes these headphones?”. The fact that Kanye West’s CD, who is also a pretty famous DJ who travels all over the world to DJ parties, has THESE particular headphones, makes me feel a sense of trust that they are of higher quality and reliable. ESPECIALLY since he tagged famous DJ’s such as Atrack and Diplo. I read the comments that people left, and they too were intrigued by the headphones and said things like, “What headphones are these?”, and “What headphones are they?”. Luckily, people in the comment thread said things like, “Nothing better than HD25s :-)”, “At least 4-6 pairs per year. This year I lost 4 and a half”, “Are theses the HD 25-1 II?”, “Custom HD25 strong look tho”. These comments informed me of what the headphones were, as well as, that they were of high quality, and simply dope. So immediately I did a Google search and BOOM they were at the top of the page. along with a pair that were $50 off on Amazon.com. I pressed on the Amazon link, and what do you know, the comments on the page were saying that they were the best headphones ever, and so on. At that moment I knew exactly what I wanted from my parents for Christmas.

The above story is a strong example of content marketing. Content Marketing is all about building an audience, and it was quite evident that Sennheiser did so with their brand. A very interesting eBook created by Scribe, called The Business Case For Agile Content Marketing. In this eBook they break down content marketing and talk about the importance of it, and how valuable an audience is.

Instead of purchasing access to an audience through the media, such as a commercial in between plays in the Seahawks vs. Packers game (GO HAWKS), your company actually becomes the media. ***Mind Blown*** With that said, I would highly recommend that you keep reading, and take notes.

As you know, the traditional way of lead generation and sales process has changed immensely. People don’t want to be sold too, they gather the information that they want, when they want, from who they want. They get recommendations from friends, they search the web for answers to their problems, they post on social media, and so forth. These people already have an opinion on your brand before you even market to them, and they probably don’t know there difference between your brand, and your competitors. Before I even viewed the image that Mr. Abloh posted on his Instagram, I didn’t know the difference between Beats by Dre, Bose, and Sennheiser. I saw them as being quite equal. I knew that some Beats by Dre tended to market towards the younger generation, while Bose and Sennheiser was for the more classy individual, who tends to be in an older age group. For companies that are looking to stand out among their competition, they need to exercise content marketing.

Companies need to recognize that content marketing is VERY effective. A component of content marketing is teaching. When you are creating compelling content that speaks to the customers needs, answers their needs, and informs them why they need this particular product, you are teaching them instead of pitching. Once you have taught them, they view your company as having authority, which consumers love, because it gives them a feeling of reassurance that your product was the right choice for them.

A key component of content marketing is that you are giving away your compelling content for free, and not paying for marketing elsewhere. Obviously this is a lot cheaper, and in the long run more effective. The longer that you create compelling content, the more reliable, and authentic you come off among your prospective buyers. In result, Google recognizes this, and places your blog, or site at the top of its search results. Google also ranks the writer that is writing the content, this is called AuthorRank.

Many companies fall to a dilemma, that I like to think of as the three dragons vs. the three-headed dragon. Take for instance the three dragons situation, these three dragons named, Content, Social Media, and SEO are all flying to this village to burn it down because they don’t like how they are being treated by the village people. While they are flying, Content gets tired, and decides that he wants to stop and take a nap. Now there is only two dragons flying to the village. Then all of a sudden, what do you know, Social Media gets hungry, so he decides to stray from the mission and go find some live-stock to BBQ, now you are only left with one dragon, SEO. SEO gets to the village and ultimately gets killed because he didn’t have backup from his dragon friend’s Content, and Social Media. Whereas if they were morphed together, they would have been able to get to the village all together, and use three times the fire to take down the village. People tend to think of content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization as three different categories that if you perform each one individually, then you will get a positive result. When in actuality, you need to morph all three of those categories together because each component plays off of each other.

Content

The foundation element is of course, content. This content has to be effective though. The content speaks to the audience, answers the audience’s questions, informs the audience, and teaches them. It must make them want to step away from their lives to give your product a chance. You want to create audience-focused content as if social media and search engines don’t exist. Give it your all when it comes to speaking to them.

Social

If you are able to perform effective social media marketing then it will lead to content distribution. This is what social media hubs are all about! People love compelling content, so compelling that they feel the need to share it to all 800+ of their friends. The people who are able to create compelling content are constantly having their content shared, and are the social media king’s and queen’s. When people share your content, Google gets notified, and it registers to them that it is in fact, high quality content.

This is the last component that you need to master. When you are creating content, you are writing it for the people who will love it. These people give your company that positive reassurance by sharing it on social media platforms, linking it to their blogs, and content sites. Google takes all of this information in and if you’re a company that demonstrates authenticity, high-value, authority, and something that people want to see when they search Google, they place you at the top of the page. With that said, you still need to tweak the way you deliver your information, so that Google will in fact be notified that you are worthy of being ranked higher than your competitors. For instance, if you are talking about outbound marketing and instead of using the words outbound marketing in your text, you are calling it OldLawn marketing because it is ugly and dead. This would be quite funny, and your viewers might think the same, but good wouldn’t understand it. Google is smart, but not human smart.

As a marketer, you need to step into the shoes of your audience. If they are on Facebook talking to friends, they are not in the “buy-buy-buy-buy” mood. They are in the socialize mood. You as a marketer need to figure out a way to get into their conversations, so that they can relate to you as a company. Content marketing is an audience building path, not necessarily a conversion-to-customer path.

Since I like to consider myself a “Smarketer”, which is a smart marketer, I naturally like to continue to expand my knowledge on topics pertaining to marketing. Which is why I went over to the website of Content Marketing Institute, and read an article titled, The 5 Pillars of Successful Content Marketing. I encourage you all to read this article as well. One thing that really stood out to me in this article, was that 2 million blog posts are being posted everyday. Which is slightly discouraging considering that this blog post will be one in two million posts today. But you can view it as a competition. You want your creative, compelling content to be heard right? Well, practice the techniques that I have talked about, and see if you can beat out your competition, and ask yourself……

Who Am I?

January 6, 2015February 20, 2015 codyhulseyblogsdatabase marketing, digital marketing, entitlement, marketing, social media, social media marketing, wolf of wall street, wwuLeave a comment

HEY.

Who Am I?

My name is Cody Hulsey. I am currently a senior at Western Washington University, and will be graduating after spring quarter (2015) with a major in business administration w/ a concentration in marketing. I love music, high-end fashion, abstract art, the internet, marketing, and working-out.

The reason I am taking Digital Marketing

The reason I am taking marketing 476 aka Digital Marketing, is simply because I want to further my knowledge in the area of marketing. Digital Marketing is on fire right now. I want to be able to use the skills that I have learned while taking this course to help businesses succeed.

What I would like to learn from Digital Marketing

As I stated earlier, digital marketing is on fire right now. I would like to become certified in HootSuite, Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Google AdWords. I strongly believe that having all four of these certifications on my resume will make me more valuable and desirable for future employers.

While interning at Bellingham Marine, I have dabbled in HootSuite, but I would like to enhance my knowledge of the crafty social media management dashboard.

I would also like to dip my toes in coding. I have always been fascinated by it, and would like to become more knowledgeable of the subject.

Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Marketing Jobs in the 21st Century

I thought the reading was very interesting. Especially since soon I will be looking for an entry-level job. The article written by Regina Pefanis Schlee and Katrin R. Harich is very eye-opening and something that I will most definitely bookmark for future review.

The article talks about the knowledge and skill requirements for marketing positions whether they are entry-level to senior-level. Technical skills are more important than conceptual skills. It also touches base on what industries are the most prominent in certain cities. Each city represents a region in which the study was done.

One thing that I found interesting was that Monster.com is more popular than CareerBuilder.com because Monster.com filters out duplicate listing of the same job. After viewing Monster.com, the user-face seems to be quite inviting (aside from the fact that the company is called, Monster). While CareerBuilder.com seems to be more boring, and the color scheme is nothing exciting, very similar to Facebook. I have not used either of these sites yet to hunt for a job, but I am confident that I will have to in the future. With that said, Monster.com will be my first choice.

Something that I thought was interesting and compelling was the fact that Internet and technology companies dominate the Seattle metropolitan area. I am very aware that the Seattle area is the stomping grounds of Microsoft, and Amazon. But I was unaware of the fact that Nintendo is considered one of the big dogs when it came to technology in the Seattle metropolitan area.

When viewing the technical skills (Table 2), it was quite evident that an entry-level employee must have MS Office skill (58.4% of job postings). But as you climb the ladder to upper-management positions, you will find that only 25% of the postings require MS Office skills. Which makes you think that they assume that you already have those skills, or if you never have to use them.

While viewing the meta-skills (table 3), I found it interesting that 13% of job postings for entry-level positions require that you have ethics. But for upper management only 4.7% require ethics. Once again, it makes you wonder whether or not it is assumed that you already have strong business ethics, or if you are not in a position where business ethics are not required (doubtful).

Marketing graduates need to obviously be able to possess oral and written communication skills. But also have technical skills that they can use to perform business analytics. Marketing graduates need to be able to use CRM systems and be able to understand the information and data that they are finding/ receiving.

Constantly stay abreast of the industry trends, and don’t be afraid to try the newest things. Fortune magazine has described a phenomenon called, “50 and Fired”. One of the reasons this happens might be because of age discrimination, but it also can be the fact that they are not staying at the forefront of the technology industry. They are staying in the past and using out-dated software programs. For their career to be profitable and healthy, they need to be able to get with the times.

DBM aka Database Marketing is something that needs to be taught in marketing curriculum’s. Universities need to recognize the fact that there is a massive benefit to offering a marketing technology degree. This will prepare their students for the real world, and will generate a lot of positivity for the university, and in return have higher amount of students applying to their university.

In the article written by Maureen Morrison for Advertising Age, called What’s Required of the Next Generation of Marketers, Morrison states, “At one time ‘you could be a functional expert in one very narrow area of marketing tactics,’ said Tome Collinger, associate dean and department chair-integrated Marketing Communications at the Medill Schoolat Northwestern University. ‘Back in the day, if you were a direct or data marketer or PR specialist, that was enough.'” I thought this was very interesting and relates to what I mentioned above about “50 and Fired”. Back in the day you didn’t have to be highly diverse to make a living. Now you have to a wide range of skills that you are able to use in an effective matter.

Forrester Interactive Marketing Forecast 2011 to 2016

The article written by Shar VanBroskirk is quite interesting, and truly makes you think about the future of marketing. 10 years ago, people would not have been able to predict where we are right now with marketing. For instance, social media is the way to go (for most businesses, but not all) and was not foreseeable 10 years ago. Every time I hop onto Facebook (which is honestly becoming quite infrequent) I see numerous ads, and they get thousands of likes. So it was quite obvious that consumers are enjoying this type of marketing.

Social media is quite inexpensive. I have promoted my own clothing brand, SomeFire.com, and I am able to reach thousands of potential customers all over the world for as little as $20. When businesses use social media to promote their business, they are cutting costs, and can use that saved money elsewhere.

Another interesting and important form of marketing is e-mail marketing. For the longest time I thought that sending ad campaigns through e-mail is the most archaic way to get businesses voice out there, especially with the option of ad campaigns getting sent directly to your spam folder. But recently I have noticed that I have been clicking on e-mails that have enticing headlines which at times can be click-bait, but for the most part are offering something that is of my interest. Businesses can utilize e-mail in so many ways. They can have you subscribe to their e-newsletter, or find out when they have new products. I believe e-mail marketing has come a long way and is only going to get better.

Forbes writer Jayson DeMers wrote an article called, The Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing. In this interesting article Mr. DeMers says, “According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for their business, with 80% indicating that their efforts increased traffic to their websites. And according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use.” I found this to be quite compelling. In the fact that, social media is something that is very prominent in our marketing world right now. I hardly ever watch TV, but I love to browse the internet, and that is where I see the most commercials, whether if it is a friend of mine that shared a comical Old Spice commercial, or if it is one of those mandatory commercials that you have to watch while you wait for your YouTube video to play.

State of Digital Marketing Talent

One thing that really stood out to me while reading this article was that there is a talent gap in digital marketing. Having a digital marketing team that is homogenous, and doesn’t rely on others to do certain aspects of the job for them is powerful, and in return your company will produce A1 marketing. After a survey was created, they found that only 8% felt strong across all digital areas. That is quite a small percentage. I believe that if the other 92% of they respondents analyzed what they were weak in, how they could fix that problem, then they will see a significant change in their marketing as a company.

I also found it interesting that one-third of the companies have groomed interns into full-time employees. I believe that if they created a system that really prepared and trained the interns and raised that percentage, then they could save money on hiring and training new people, as well as, produce the cream of the crop level entry employees.

Entitlement is becoming popular around young employees. I recently had this conversation with my boss. My boss thinks that college graduates come out of the gates and want to climb to the top as fast as possible. They watch movies like Wolf of Wall Street and they think that all that success and money came to Jordan Belfort over-night. They need to realize that you need to struggle, put in your 10,000 hours and prove that you deserve that raise, or promotion.

According to an article written called, How college students think they are more special than EVER: Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses states, “Psychologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues compiled the data and found that over the past four decades there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being ‘above average’ in the areas of academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence.” I believe that it is important to believe that you excel in all four of those categories but I also think that it is important how you present yourself in the workspace. I believe that it is important to show your ‘above average’ capabilities in your work and not just talk about it.

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