eMarketing reflections

Volcano in Europe shows: social media is really social

jeroenhoekman — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:58:45 +0000

Whoever said that the Internet has made our society less social, because people spend more time online and not with friends, has just been proved incorrect.

The current volcanic cloud creating havoc in Europe has also shown that social media brings out the best in people. Facebook groups like Carpool Europe and Twitter hash tags like #GetMeHome have become extremely popular. More important, requests for help have been answered by large amounts of people, offering a ride to whoever needs to go into the same direction. Although this kind of actions would have been much more difficult to realize before we had Internet, it is still amazing how many people offer to help others for free.

It gets even better, with people living around airports to offer a place for the night. These days there is so much news of crime and violence that it is not a small step to invite unknown people into your house for the night. Maybe Internet will bring us closer together than ever before.

Did you have another experience where social media made people behave more social, or the opposite, then please let us know!
Read more articles about social media

How to measure the ROI of your social media projects

jeroenhoekman — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:16:59 +0000

Introduction
Measuring the ROI of a social media project is like the Holy Grail of online marketing; everybody is searching for it but only few have seen the light of wisdom. In principle it should not be difficult at all to measure your ROI. You just have to do what you have always done: plan your project well with clear defined goals and KPI’s and then measure those KPI’s. So, what is so difficult about it?

Social media is different
Well, your first problem is that you are trying to compare apples with pears. Return on investment is a financial measurement, while social media programs are emotional. Therefore it is not possible to determine the ROI of your project directly.

Your second problem is that in general marketing campaigns are limited to a certain period, which enables you to measure the ROI over that period. Social media projects however tend to be ongoing. You cannot just tell your customers you are going back to your former ivory tower behaviour after you “finished” your project. You can of course look at your sales and see what happened during the period you first started with social media, but there are so many more factors involved that this can only give you an indication.

And your third problem is that you are still thinking as a marketer; as a brand manager. Social media is the total online presence of your customers, talking about you and expecting total transparency and an excellent customer service from you. (Do not think you cannot afford to be totally transparent, because if you will not be transparent, then your customers will make sure they create it themselves!) This means, you should not aim for a financial ROI, but for a social success through an excellent customer service.

Hence you will have to accept that with your social media campaign you need to focus on measuring the social impact; the relationship you build with your customer and accept that this will directly influence your sales.

Use Twitter to monitor your brands online

jeroenhoekman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:53:48 +0000

Are you monitoring what is being said about you and your brand online? Are you able to react immediately if your brand is being trashed in a blog or an online discussion? There are many ways to monitor your customers online but the real effective ones will be done by a third party and cost you a lot of money. Anyway, even then you should always be asking yourself if you are able to react quick enough to contain the damage. Whenever your business is too small to contract a third party, or if you do but still want to keep your own finger to the pulse, you should be thinking about Twitter.

Why use Twitter to monitor?
At this moment Twitter is the place where people comment online, so this is where you probably find a large percentage of your customers. If used in the right way, Twitter will show you real time results, which allows you to react immediately to any damaging publication. It is much easier for your customers to react to your postings on Twitter than on a blog and you can publish your own comments and messages also much quicker. Because of its short messages Twitter is the ideal messaging service to use on your mobile phone, so you keep up to date where ever you are. On top of this all Twitter has several great tools to help you monitor your brand like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.

Read complete article

Youtube videos

jeroenhoekman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:03:10 +0000

YouTube, the forgotten channel
Are you using YouTube in your marketing campaigns?
February 25th, 2010

When planning online marketing campaigns, especially in the social media environment, marketeers often talk about using Facebook and Twitter. YouTube is often mentioned as an example when people talk about social media, but when it comes to marketing YouTube is usually ignored. There are companies promoting their products with a video on YouTube or placing their TV ads also on YouTube, but not many companies use YouTube actively in their campaigns.

The big advantage of YouTube is that it is visual. Many people will prefer watching a video over reading texts and visual messages stick longer in peoples memories. There are several ways you can use YouTube:

The easiest way is to create a video, place it on YouTube and then incorporate that one in your website(s). This will enliven your website, even if most of it consists of texts, and it gives you an extra link from YouTube to your site, improving your position in Search engines. By placing this YouTube video on different sites, blogs etc. you get a better reach and again create more links to your main website.
However, in YouTube you can also set up larger campaigns. It is possible to create links within YouTube videos, that will start other videos. This way you can make a series of related video messages that people can go through or even write a story with different outcomes. For example, if someone would like to buy a car, it would be possible to create a series of choices, showing the customer different experiences according to his or her needs. This customer would end up at one of several result videos showing the car that fulfils all the customer’s requirements.
Do you see any other use for this kind of video chains or for YouTube videos in general?

For a more extensive explanation of creating links in YouTube videos: How to link YouTube videos

Twitter can get you sued or in prison as well

jeroenhoekman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:42:31 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the dangers of social media and focussed on Facebook. It showed how dangerous a Facebook account can be. Below you will find that Twitter is not as safe as it seems either.

Have you ever been sued?
A famous example is of course the one of Coutney Love being sued for trashing a fashion company (Read article) , but there are much more scary examples out there.

Do not Tweet your complaints in public
Tweeting about the state of the apartments got this tennant sued: Read article
Avoid Tweeting while angry
CEO of Pizza kitchen gets sued after trashing marketing company: Read article
Be very carefull when Tweeting about a brand
Kim Kardashian was sued when she tweeted that she did not endorse the diet coockie (as the company claimed on their website): Read article

Online comments can get you arrested
Most people who have been arrested because of online actions did already have a shady relation with the law, but look at the second and third examples below, which might happen to you as well if you do not rethink every publication twice before sending them out.

Poking is not as innocent as it looks
A woman in Tennessee got arrested for poking someone in Facebook: Read article
Do not joke while traveling, not even on Twitter
Annoyed passenger gets arrested over joke “bomb threat” on Twitter: Read article
Be aware of financial consequences of your online comments
This happened in a revolution type situation, but be aware that any remark that could implicit financial loss is dangerous: Read article
Burglar gets arrested because he checked his Facebook account
This is one of the unbelievable actions that you and me will never do, but do think about using your account at work or elsewhere and what the consequences might be! Read article
Not using Twitter might be dangerous as well!
When police asked an executive for not using Twitter (on their request) to disperse a crowd, they arrested him for not doing so: Read article

Of course most of these examples are either not very intelligent actions or far from our bed, but they make you think what else might go wrong when you comment online, or post some of your holiday or office photos. As I keep reminding my readers: do not send anything from your computer onto the Internet, unless you would be ok if it appeared on the front page of your national newspapers.

See you on Twitter, if you still dare.

See the article about: Getting fired or divorced because of Facebook (January 30th, 2010)