Putting the new rules to work

Archive for the ‘Media selection’ Category

One of the most perceptive TV commercials I ever saw was for a television manufacturer. “Here’s the demo,” the announcer said, “but remember: You’re watching it on YOUR TV.”

That was a long time ago, but it illustrates the futility of using the wrong medium to carry your message. Even Jesus warned against putting new wine in old wineskins, though hardly anybody knows why. (Hint: It’s about fermentation and CO2 emissions.)

About four hours into a delightful morning of judging entries in a national social media competition, I had an “Aha!” moment when I realized that we were judging social media efforts (all of which were designed to be seen online) by looking at paper printouts stuffed into three-ring binders.

It’s bad enough to have to fool with paper under any circumstances, now that we’re all addicted to digital media. Sitting around a conference table without a computer in sight, I found myself frustrated with entries that included 200-character URLs leading to YouTube videos and web sites. (As an aside, this was one of the few times I’ve ever actually wished somebody had thought to use QR codes, so I could have at least looked at the links on my phone. But not a single entrant thought to do that.)

In retrospect, it would have a made a lot more sense (and been a lot less expensive) to have the entries submitted to a secured web site, where judges could see the materials in their native ecosystem. But we’ve always used paper-stuffed binders for contest entries, so naturally that’s what we used.

Because of the confidentiality of the judging process, I can’t say much about the entries themselves, except that they ranged from the truly awful to the startlingly creative.

We saw a ton of contests and giveaways to generate online buzz. A lot of these are already starting to feel like trendy tactics that will fade quickly. (Some things that looked really clever in early 2011 just look like spam today.) It also seemed everybody and his/her mom was targeting the “mommy bloggers” who write about things like food, sneakers, coupons, diapers and snotty noses.

Oddly, there wasn’t a single Kleenex campaign. Oh well.

This time of year, a lot of us are evaluating what we did in the past few months and looking for ways to accomplish more in 2012. This article, which I wrote for the spring edition of the Georgia Auctioneers Association newsletter, suggests ways to get more for your marketing dollar. I figured it might be timely at the moment. While this was aimed at auctioneers, the principles apply to any business. – Carl

Carl Carter, APR
President, NewMediaRules Communications

Nearly every auctioneer I talk to these days tells me that while things are improving, it’s still hard to get sellers to commit to an auction. And cash-strapped sellers are more reluctant than ever to fund a substantial auction budget in advance. So when you sign up a sale, it’s critical that you make the most of it and spend your money wisely.

That means it’s more important than ever to know where your prospective bidders are and how you can cost-effectively reach them. My firm conducted a survey of auctioneers’ use of media earlier this year and found that 64% “rarely” or “never” have a budget of more than $10,000. In fact, 40% often have budgets of less than $1,000. So the old saying, “waste not, want not” applies in spades.

To help, here’s a roundup of the latest trends on where people are going for information. By watching these trends, you at least have a chance of identifying ways to “meet them there” and better promote your upcoming auctions:

Newspapers. The well-publicized flight from print newspapers continues, and almost 4 in 10 recently told Pew Research pollsters that losing their daily newspaper would have no impact on their lives. For every age group under 50, 24% or fewer now read a print newspaper. Below age 40, it drops to 15% or less.

“But,” we reassure ourselves, “we sell more to older people who are still reading the print newspaper.” This is true to an extent, but the fastest shrinking print audience consists of those who are 65 and over. Still, it’s true that about 31% still read a print newspaper, so it’s worth allocating part of your budget where possible. But what about the rest? Where are they going?

Search engines. For one American in three, the daily search for news begins with a Google search. This means it’s a good idea to do anything you can to get in front of those folks, including search engine advertising (e.g., Google Adwords).

Many auctioneers are seeking to reach this audience by buying listings or banners on some of the many web portals that have high Google rankings. This doesn’t get you on Google directly, but it can put you one or two clicks away. And you can buy a listing on many portals for $25 or $50, though banners with premium placement can run hundreds of dollars. Nearly 7 auctioneers in 10 said in my survey that they were buying more portals than a year ago. And on tight budgets, that’s not surprising, given the low cost of admission.

Handsets. Among those who own mobile devices, 42% said they use them to get weather and at least some local news, while 37% get information about restaurants and other businesses.  So how do we reach this vast, growing market? The answers are anything but simple. Email marketing is one option, given the huge number of people who access their email via iPhone, Android and Blackberry.  But email is waning as an online advertising tool, shrinking an estimated 18% in during 2010, according to Pew. If you use email marketing, do yourself a favor and make sure you comply fully with the Can-Spam Act, which has strict rules for who you can assume has given you permission to send them email.

Social Media. It’s no secret that a majority of Americans are now on Facebook and/or Twitter, and 60% of the auctioneers who responded to the NewMediaRules survey said they’re using more Social Media than they were a year ago. The natural question is, “what does it mean to use Social Media,” and that’s a question that goes far beyond the scope of this article. I suspect that for most, the use consists primarily of posting to their Facebook pages, with a much smaller number using Twitter. (Ironically, Twitter offers far more potential for reaching larger numbers of people, but you have to know how.) Now, Facebook has begun selling advertising based on expressed interest, so you can pay a specified amount for each person who clicks through to your web site. But folks who’ve looked into this more deeply than I have tell me that the prices can be steep, so make sure you understand what you’re getting into.

Oh yes, and one other thing: Even today, nothing beats a good sign, so don’t scrimp on signage!

If I didn’t think it would start a riot, I’d suggest we do away  with “social media” altogether. Not the media, but the term. By lumping widely disparate vehicles together on one term, we give people the mistaken idea that they all do more or less the same thing. This seems to be especially true of Facebook and Twitter, which have just enough in common to feed the mistaken idea that they’re two tools for doing the same job.

After all, both allow only short messages (140 for Twitter and 420 for Facebook). Both let you post photos and links. Both allow people to connect with you by following you (Twitter) or becoming your Facebook friend. And indeed, a lot of the “social media” posting utilities, such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic, allow you to post to both, simply by clicking a second icon. So I guess it’s easy to see them as more or less equivalent.

But here’s the big difference: Twitter can allow you to reach a targeted group of thousands, regardless of how many “followers” you have, whereas Facebook makes reaching out beyond your “friend” base much more difficult and less certain. On the other hand, Facebook provides a far better place to have conversations and develop relationships. I find it helpful to think of Facebook as a telephone (OK, maybe one with a party line) allowing two-way conversations, whereas Twitter is more like a PA system, better suited to one-way communication.

When I hear someone brag about having thousands of Twitter followers, I just roll my eyes, because in most cases, those followers may have very little to do with what you wish to accomplish. Instead, it’s better to place your messages on appropriate channels using hash tags (you create a hash tag by putting a # at the beginning of a work, e.g. #hashtags). We’ll talk more about that later.

Yes, I know you can reach people searching for topics on Facebook, but that doesn’t seem to be the way people are using it for now. It may change later, but for the moment, think Twitter PA and Facebook telephone.

As we saw in Building Your Media Kit Part 2, your lineup needs to include media with various characteristics, such as carrying capacity (the ability to carry long or complex messages) and reach. These days, when I see companies build entire marketing programs around Facebook and Twitter, I wonder if they’d try to build a house with nothing but a screwdriver.

• Immediacy (How quickly can it get the information out there?).
• Carrying capacity (How much information can it convey?)
• Reach (Who can it help you reach? Are they the right people for your purpose?)
• Interactivity (Is it one-way, or does it permit dialogue and feedback?)
• Cognitive impact (Does it appeal to the “right brain” emotions like TV or to the rational mind?)
• Cost-effectiveness (Does it get the job done at a cost you can live with? Do you KNOW what the job is?)

In the next few days, we’ll develop each of these characteristics. For the moment, you may want to look over this grid that follows. Everything on it is debatable, to say the least, but it may help organize your thoughts around the question of which Social Media may be useful for various purposes.

One of the best ways to understand a concept is to peel away all the clutter around it so that you’re left with no distractions. So just for the moment, let’s imagine you’re putting together your media toolkit using only tools that were available in 1983 – a year before the World Wide Web appeared.

And just to give us something to talk about, let’s say you’d opened a sandwich shop with a really unique concept – a New York style deli run by a Norwegian immigrant who spent 10 years in Mexico learning to do wonderful things with corned beef and pastrami. Your communications “to do” list might include the following:

• Publicize your menu.
• Tell the story behind the store.
• Get people talking.
• Remind people that you’re there. Signs and billboards would be the natural choice.

Now, let’s look at your challenge in terms of the characteristics we outlined previously in Building your media toolkit: Part 1: Immediacy, Carrying Capacity, Reach, Interactivity, Cognitive Impact and Cost Effectiveness. Remember, we’re dealing only with vintage 1983 media!

The menu might be relatively long, so you’d need something with a decent carrying capacity. Maybe some fliers distributed through neighborhood stores would do the trick. (Remember, this is 1983. No Web!) You might be able to expand your flier into a newsletter and tell your story. If the story is compelling, you could even interest the local newspaper into doing a story on a slow news day.  That’d have a lot more reach.

Now, what if you were promoting your Norwegian/Mexican New York Style Deli today? Some of those would still be good choices, but you’d have some alternatives:

• To publish your menu: Web site with story and menu – High carrying capacity, inexpensive (which doesn’t make it cost-effective, but we’ll deal with that later).
• To tell the story behind your store: Use your web site due to its high carrying capacity. However, you’ll need something to attract people to the site, so Twitter, Facebook and permission-based e-mail marketing are worth considering.
• Get people talking: Facebook group with specials. Actually, I stole this idea from a little sandwich shop that’s doing this very well. High immediacy, high carrying capacity, and cost-effective. Plus, Facebook’s a great place to start conversations that can give you a chance to tell your story.
• To remind people that you’re there: Twitter has virtually no capacity, but it’s great at reaching a large audience (if you know how) and pointing to something like your web site that can tell the complete story. Think of it as a sign or a billboard.

The point of this post is simply to begin positioning some Internet-based media in terms of their pre-web counterparts. It obviously gets a lot more complicated than this. One thing at a time.

To make the most of today’s vast array of communications tools, we have to understand how they relate to each other and which ones we want to use. Trying to figure out every new medium or gadget that comes along will drive you nuts and render you useless as a communications professional.

So when you’re feeling overwhelmed and hopelessly behind the curve with all the options out there, just take a step back and look at the big picture. And breathe.

Remember that there have always been far more ways to communicate than anybody can use effectively. Most of them work for one thing or another. But there’s never been a magic bullet, and there never will be. Not television. Not sermons. Not press releases. Not newsletters. Not podcasts. Not web sites. Not even Twitter.

As we begin our conversation about how to navigate today’s media landscape, we’ll look often at various media in terms of their core characteristics. Some of these include:

• Immediacy (How quickly can it get the information out there?).
• Carrying capacity (How much information can it convey?)
• Reach (Who can it help you reach? Are they the right people for your purpose?)
• Interactivity (Is it one-way, or does it permit dialogue and feedback?)
• Cognitive impact (Does it appeal to the “right brain” emotions like TV or to the rational mind?)
• Cost-effectiveness (Does it get the job done at a cost you can live with? Do you KNOW what the job is?)