Matt Kelly on Digital Strategy

When it comes to social media integration, always consider your customers. Are you bringing value to their online experience, or are you spamming them to oblivion with the equivalent of ‘junk mail’? Its time to think outside of the square.

Find that amazing, differential or innovative aspect of your product or marketing campaign and develop your sharable content around this key point!

Simplified, you should;

• Develop the concept.

• Research relevant social delivery portals.

• Communicate as appropriate.

Jonathan Volk has written an eBook entitled the ‘Facebook Ads Guide’ which ultimately  focuses on how to drive traffic and in turn, make money by selling products using Facebook as an advertising platform.

We continue to identify time and time again that the absolute key to success online is through increasing traffic and I found that Volk has illustrated this in a particularly clear and concise way. Jonathan has documented all of the points he found that were required to run a successful and profitable campaign using Facebook.

I found Jonathan’s view of Google particularly interesting, as Volk clearly isn’t impressed at how Google works with marketers through their affiliate system and adwords campaigns. I’d recommend even just checking out the video on Jonathan’s sales page which outlines his views and why he found himself pulling away from Google and towards Facebook. To see the video: click here.

A few points Volk quotes which I found particularly interesting include:

• Facebook now receives more traffic in the US, UK and a number of other countries then Google.
• Traffic is more targeted on Facebook then Google.
• Facebook advertising is easier to set up and monitor then Google’s campaigns.
• There is far less competition on Facebook then there is on Google, therefore you are not competing to get your message ‘out there’.
• Facebook allows you to target particular types of people, which means that you aren’t paying for every click, but you are rather qualifying the user as a potential purchaser before they hit the page.

This particular eBook is a great read and could virtually be used as a campaign development guide from start to finish including; how to choose the right affiliates, who to target, how to build the most suitable ad and finally, how to scale the campaign based on traffic.

My only recommendation is that you shouldn’t expect to make $3000+ a day, but rather let the techniques that Jonathan used to build his success impact your future promotional activities.

At just US$79.00 or AU$92.28 this is a valuable resource to learn the techniques that have proven to provide Jonathan Volk great success.

To check out the book CLICK HERE.

Old Spice has been on a video recording rampage, recording personalised video responses from the ‘Old Spice Guy’ to almost 200 people who’ve posed questions on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The ‘Old Spice Guy’, a cult hero, has been known widely since he first recorded a television advertisement for the brand in early 2 010.

The company has gone on to leverage their campaign by using the same legendary character to reach out to dozens of online celebs and in turn, created a huge buzz around the Old Spice brand.

A successful campaign on the outside, let’s see just how far the message reached…

Ashton Kutcher, celebrity and actor (twitter.com/aplusk), tweeted to Kevin Rose, Digg.com CEO (twitter.com/kevinrose) about the video the Old Spice Guy (twitter.com/oldspice) recorded for Kevin.

So lets do some math…

Ashton Kutcher has 5,280,576 twitter followers.
Kevin Rose has 1,170,008 twitter followers.
Old Spice has 85,927 twitter followers.

This single tweet could have potentially been witnessed by over 6.5 million people. These are people who potentially wouldn’t have stumbled upon the video and certainly wouldn’t have searched for it without reason. Over 6.5 million people who now have an increased brand recognition for Old Spice.

But wait, this doesn’t even consider the viral nature of social media. What about the number of people who retweeted Ashton? Ashton and Kevin are both very influential on twitter, so a tweet from either or both could have easily been retweeted hundreds of times, to hundreds of additional networks.

Is it starting to sink in? 

It all started with compelling content to engage consumers… Getting the right content, to the right people. Old Spice have developed a genius campaign which gives consumers an urge to share their brand. Another company, with a fantastic approach to social media.

Check out Old Spice’s YouTube channel here.

The figures stated are current as at 20^th July, 2010.

Your web designer

Whilst he/she might be great at HTML, Java and CSS, it’s unlikely that your code monkey really knows how you can creatively implement social media strategies. Many designers and developers are now adding social media into their service offering out of fear of losing clients to social media firms. If this is you, you are doing a great injustice to your clients! Why not try to set up referral arrangements with other service offering firms rather the trying to ‘do it yourself’, the inflow future business could be far more significant and you are providing quality services to your clients.

Your 16 year old cousin, nephew, niece, neighbour, friend, etc.

Your teen friend might know how to create a facebook, twitter and YouTube account to communicate with their friends, but would you trust them to call your clients to discuss a new product? How about write your next blanket email? Social media should be another portal to market your business, and should be an extremely effective method for initiating 2 way communication with stakeholders. The tools you choose to implement are just the facilitators for the conversation.