6 Reasons to Make Your Big Idea Small
Posted on 12. May, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, content marketing, exacttarget, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research
Brad Van Orden is the most interesting man in the world. It’s not the Dos Equis guy, it’s Brad.
Sheena Navigates the Market in Nebaj, Guatemala
A former product engineer for WL Gore & Associates, Brad is an expert telemark skier, mountain biker, mechanic, cook, humorist, and explorer. I got to know Brad and his wife Sheena when I lived in Flagstaff, AZ (where they’re from). I met Brad and helped him with some Web strategy when he took an interest in sustainable energy (as a hobby) and taught himself C++ and a bunch of other programming languages to build a company called Sunwind Solutions that would automagically figure out the best solar or wind equipment for your home, based on a massive database that mapped wind and sunshine patterns against GPS data. Exactly the same way I spend my free time, if you swap “drinking tequila” for the “teaching yourself how to program” parts.
Not content with their baseline level of intrigue, Brad and Sheena decided to quit their jobs, buy a VW van, and spend three years driving across the world. This is no hippie quest, it’s a methodical embrace of a new life that simultaneously requires extensive planning, yet none whatsoever.
Their VW van is named “Nacho” and Brad is documenting their adventures with terrific blog posts and photos at Drive Nacho Drive. Brad is a gifted travel writer in the mold of Tim Cahill (my second favorite travel author, and founder of Outside Magazine). Instead of posting a couple times a week, Brad could have instead held off and released a killer, long-form tome when the trip ended.
But Brad Van Orden thinks small. And so should you.
Charles Dickens Was a Hell of a Content Marketer
Serializing your work used to be the standard practice. Dickens published every one of his novels in a serial form, experimenting with weekly and monthly episodic fiction. It made his work cheaper (in the short run) and thus more accessible. Publishers loved it too, because they could include ads in each part. In short, it worked.
Somewhere, we got away from this notion and started to embrace a “bigger is better” philosophy with regard to publishing (and now content marketing). We need to swing the pendulum back the other way, and start atomizing our content (hat tip to Todd Defren for coining that).
Deconstructing Your Big Idea
When I talk about atomizing your content, I’m not advocating more ideas, or even a tremendous amount of additional work. What I’m imploring you to do is take your big idea and turn it into several smaller ideas. You have to disavow yourself of the natural inclination to create the “mother of all” whatever, and instead embrace the propagation of a larger number of less massive (but still meaningful) content executions.
My friends (and clients) at ExactTarget have a fine example of thinking small in their Subscribers, Fans, and Followers content. This is a very large research project that uncovered many important behaviors and data points related to social media and email marketing. Instead of releasing it as an omnibus study, they deconstructed it into 14 separate parts and released a new piece every few weeks, increasing overall impact considerably. See the whole series here.
The 6 Benefits of Thinking Small
Atomizing your content in this way has six advantages over the “mother of all” approach:
1. Atomized Content is More Searchable
When you break your content into multiple pieces you get more bait in the water to attract your most important customer….Google. Producing disparate pieces of content gives you the opportunity to emphasize a wider number of search terms, cross-link your content, acquire more inbound links, and increase your total number of ranked pages.
2. Atomized Content is More Findable
This is especially valid when you repurpose and reimagine your content while also atomizing it. What will get more exposure for your company, a blog post or a blog post + a podcast? How about a Slideshare presentation or a Slideshare presentation + a blog post? Every presentation you make should be at least one blog post, and each blog post you write is the untapped nucleus for a presentation. This findability principle is the reason we have full written transcripts of every video interview and every Social Pros episode here on Convince & Convert.
3. Atomized Content Gets Consumed More
In a world where 140 characters equals a fully-formed thought, what will get consumed more – a 90-second video, or a 32-page eBook? Typically, it’s the former. Face it, Johnny Don’t Read. Every trend in social media and content marketing is toward brevity and showing rather than telling. YouTube. Pinterest. Socialcam. Viddy. Instagram. Tumblr. Infographics. Will I still write this blog in two years? Will anyone still read posts as long as this one?
This is why even though I’ve delayed my next book project, when I get ready to jump back in, I’ll be working on a short, small, easy to digest book. Seth Godin has this trend nailed with his Domino Project.
4. Atomized Content Gets Spread More
The potential virality of smaller content supersedes larger content in almost every case. This is partially related to consumption, as we are more likely to recommend via tweet, share, +1, buffer, email forward, etc. something we have actually read or watched. But it’s also just a factor of mathematics. If you have one terrific eBook it will definitely be shared. But if you take that same eBook and release it in 8 parts, the collective shares for those components will be higher – and given the inclusion of sharing behaviors in search results, this also impacts #1 above.
5. Atomized Content Gains More Mind Share
One of the big successes of the ExactTarget project is media coverage. Thousands of blog posts and media mentions have been made of the Subscribers, Fans, Followers research. It’s very good information, and packaged well. But the fact that there have been 14 possible bites of the media apple instead of one makes a big difference. Thinking small gives you more opportunities to create and sustain mindshare among media, prospective customers, and even current customers.
6. Atomized Content Generates More Leads
One of the often overlooked benefits of thinking small in content marketing is that each time you deconstruct or reimagine your content, you have another opportunity to include calls-to-action. Remember, you’re in the behavior business not the eyeballs business. An 8-piece series gives you 800% more calls-to-action than a “mother of all” program. Further, when your content is smaller, your call-to-action competes against fewer words, pictures, and other content elements, which could provide additional attention and conversion (your results may vary).
Be an Amoeba
Remember learning about cell division in school? A single-celled organism becomes two, then four, then eight? The next time you’re brainstorming a content marketing execution for your company, think like an amoeba. How can you take your big idea and make it two, or four, or eight? That’s Thinking Small. Go do it.
About the Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a hype-free social media strategist & speaker, tequila guy, and co-author of The NOW Revolution. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.
6 Reasons to Make Your Big Idea Small is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting
Remembering the Dangers of Social Media Research
Posted on 15. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, exacttarget, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research
This one is true. I just know it.
Numbers don’t lie. But sometimes we lie to ourselves about what numbers represent.
Last week, I wrote a post about new research from ExactTarget that studied Americans’ digital channel preferences. It was a lengthy report, but what stood out for me was the finding that only 5% of us prefer promotional offers from brands to show up in social media – even brands we have given permission to contact us. I accompanied the post with the somewhat inflammatory headline - New Research: Americans Hate Social Promotions. This is not factually correct, as the survey did not ask about love vs. hate, but rather about “preference.” I should have been more careful about that.
What I found even more interesting than the research was the negative reaction to it by readers at Convince & Convert, on Twitter, on Google + and elsewhere. While it had several somewhat strident tentacles, the gist of the complaint was “this research cannot be true, because I clearly remember a study saying more than half of all people WANT promotions and offers in social media.” Not a single aggrieved reader cited the research numerically or with a link, but several were convinced that consumers’ desire for special offers and coupons in social media was as insatiable as Ozzie Guillen’s lust to say stupid things.
They remembered the research in general. It stuck with them. But they couldn’t remember the company who published it, what the exact numbers were, or how they were divined. I remembered it too, and looked it up. It was the Lithium and CMO Council study on the Social Brand Experience from December, 2011.
Upon review, however, these reports are not contradictory. If you ask two different questions, you’re likely to get two different answers. Here’s how:
ExactTarget 2012 Channel Preference Survey
Survey Sample: 1,481 Americans, using MarketTools database, randomly sampled and weighted to be representative by age and gender
Response Methodology: Written survey, with permission granted by parents for participation for minors
Question Asked:
“What is your preferred channel for promotional messages from companies whom you have granted permission to send you ongoing information?”
Lithium/CMO Council Social Brand Experience Survey
Survey Sample: 1,300 consumers. Unclear whether they were all Americans, or whether they were existing social media users. Lithium published age and gender demographics, which were not weighted to match national patterns. Uncertain if this was random sample, or self-selected participation
Response Methodology: Online survey
Question Asked:
When I like a brand on Facebook, I expect:
Multiple answers were permissible, and 67% of respondents selected “To be eligible for exclusive offers”.
Well yeah. I’m surprised it wasn’t higher, actually. If I Like a page, I do suspect that they will give me a special offer at some point. That doesn’t mean I prefer those offers to be in social media versus other places.
The Danger of Data
There are at least 4 ways these research reports are different, and consequently why the findings of each are not in conflict.
1. One survey asked about preference. The other asked about expectations
2. One survey allowed for one answer. The other allowed for multiple answers.
3. One survey asked about Facebook in comparison to other channels. The other asked about Facebook “like” outcomes
4. One survey asked about how consumers behave. The other asked about how consumers anticipate brands will behave.
5. There are also significant differences in sample and response methodology.
Given that in the same Lithium results set, 50% of respondents said that they like a brand on Facebook to find service and support, and 41% like a brand on Facebook to share their ideas for new products, do you believe that companies are massively under-executing in the areas of Facebook CRM and crowd-sourcing? Both of those are interesting findings, and just as valid as the “67% of fans want special offers” data point. But the latter was the headline on dozens of blog posts, and maybe we vaguely recall the headline and the Mashable article, and maybe we start to make business decisions based on that piece of information. And then maybe we reject out of hand another data point that we assume is incorrect because it contradicts what we’ve convinced ourselves to be true.
This isn’t about which research is better, or “true”. They are both good studies using different approaches, and there’s no such thing as “true” research, just accurate interpretations of it.
New Research: Americans Hate Social Media Promotions
Posted on 08. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, exacttarget, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, Twitter
Among other disruptive characteristics that have altered the nature of business forever (real-time interaction, every customer is a reporter, customer service is a spectator sport, etc.) a major way that social media changes the game is the Democratization of Voices.
Your Company Needs to Be Human Because You’re Competing with Humans
Social media is the first time in history that companies communicate alongside real people, and with no inherent advantage. Go to your Facebook Wall and scroll down for a while. Mine looks something like this:
Friend
Friend
Friend
Brand
Mom
Wife
Brand
Acquaintance
Acquaintance
I’ll bet yours is approximately the same. Now look at Twitter (public feed of the people you follow, not lists). Basically the same, right? A mixture of people you know, people you love, people you want to know, and companies. All of them using precisely the same tools and formats to jostle for your attention. This is simply unprecedented.
Your Mom does not buy full-page magazine ads adjacent to car companies. Your friends do not make 60-second radio spots. Your high school ex-girlfriend doesn’t put up freeway billboards (unless she’s even more deranged than most). Those are brand tactics, not people tactics. Yet in social media, brands and people are using the same toolbox.
Because social media strips away the corporate communication advantages (money, personnel, expertise) they have enjoyed forever, brands often try to fight through the clutter of social media and curry your favor by giving you the BEST OFFER EVER. The paradox is that’s exactly what we don’t want.
We Don’t Want Promotions in Social Media
We the people don’t want promotions in social media. It’s not as if we signed up for social media sites so that we could hang out with software companies and hotel chains and T-shirt purveyors and ham merchants. We signed up to connect with each other, not with commerce.
New research from my friends ExactTarget (I am proud to have them as a client) puts a mathematical fine point on our collective abhorrence for social promotions. In their 2012 Channel Preferences Study (download it here for free) 1,500 Americans ages 15 and older were asked about their usage of email, social media, and text messaging. The results are astounding.
Even for companies that we have given permission to send us offers (not Spam), only 4% of us prefer those messages to be delivered via Facebook, and just 1% via Twitter.
Only 4% of us would look at Facebook first to find a deal from a company. Another 10% would look at Facebook second.
Where do we prefer to receive and look for promotional messages? Email. That old, neglected war horse of digital marketing still delivers the dollars, as 77% of survey participants want promotional email from companies, and 44% would look to email first to find a deal.
Be Social Don’t Do Social
I’ve been critical about Facebook’s Timeline and how the company is forcing companies to act like people on the platform. But they’re right. If we so clearly don’t want special offers and promotions clogging our social streams, companies must focus on being social, and worry less about doing social media in ways that approximate direct marketing.
I’m not saying never run a contest or a promotion or a special offer or a threshold deal in social media. But if your company doesn’t have a social media editorial program that emphasizes spontaneous, personal, human, light-hearted, interesting, funny, timely, and photo-driven content, you are swimming against a powerful tide of customer desire.
Smart companies use social to turn customers into fans, and fans into volunteer marketers. They worry less about squeezing every nickel and click out of each tweet and status update.
The more you sell, the less you sell.
I’d like to hear what you think in the comments. Are companies headed down a blind alley by relying too much on social media promotions? Get the Channel Preferences study for free here.
New Research: Americans Hate Social Media Promotions
Posted on 08. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, exacttarget, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, Twitter
Among other disruptive characteristics that have altered the nature of business forever (real-time interaction, every customer is a reporter, customer service is a spectator sport, etc.) a major way that social media changes the game is the Democratization of Voices.
Your Company Needs to Be Human Because You’re Competing with Humans
Social media is the first time in history that companies communicate alongside real people, and with no inherent advantage. Go to your Facebook Wall and scroll down for a while. Mine looks something like this:
Friend
Friend
Friend
Brand
Mom
Wife
Brand
Acquaintance
Acquaintance
I’ll bet yours is approximately the same. Now look at Twitter (public feed of the people you follow, not lists). Basically the same, right? A mixture of people you know, people you love, people you want to know, and companies. All of them using precisely the same tools and formats to jostle for your attention. This is simply unprecedented.
Your Mom does not buy full-page magazine ads adjacent to car companies. Your friends do not make 60-second radio spots. Your high school ex-girlfriend doesn’t put up freeway billboards (unless she’s even more deranged than most). Those are brand tactics, not people tactics. Yet in social media, brands and people are using the same toolbox.
Because social media strips away the corporate communication advantages (money, personnel, expertise) they have enjoyed forever, brands often try to fight through the clutter of social media and curry your favor by giving you the BEST OFFER EVER. The paradox is that’s exactly what we don’t want.
We Don’t Want Promotions in Social Media
We the people don’t want promotions in social media. It’s not as if we signed up for social media sites so that we could hang out with software companies and hotel chains and T-shirt purveyors and ham merchants. We signed up to connect with each other, not with commerce.
New research from my friends ExactTarget (I am proud to have them as a client) puts a mathematical fine point on our collective abhorrence for social promotions. In their 2012 Channel Preferences Study (download it here for free) 1,500 Americans ages 15 and older were asked about their usage of email, social media, and text messaging. The results are astounding.
Preferred Channel for Promotional Messages From Companies Whom I Have Granted Permission to Send Me Ongoing Information
Even for companies that we have given permission to send us offers (not Spam), only 4% of us prefer those messages to be delivered via Facebook, and just 1% via Twitter. 77% of us prefer offer to be delivered via email.
Only 4% of us would look at Facebook first to find a deal from a company. Another 10% would look at Facebook second.
Where do we prefer to receive and look for promotional messages? Email. That old, neglected war horse of digital marketing still delivers the dollars, as 77% of survey participants want promotional email from companies, and 44% would look to email first to find a deal.
Be Social Don’t Do Social
I’ve been critical about Facebook’s Timeline and how the company is forcing companies to act like people on the platform. But they’re right. If we so clearly don’t want special offers and promotions clogging our social streams, companies must focus on being social, and worry less about doing social media in ways that approximate direct marketing.
I’m not saying never run a contest or a promotion or a special offer or a threshold deal in social media. But if your company doesn’t have a social media editorial program that emphasizes spontaneous, personal, human, light-hearted, interesting, funny, timely, and photo-driven content, you are swimming against a powerful tide of customer desire.
Smart companies use social to turn customers into fans, and fans into volunteer marketers. They worry less about squeezing every nickel and click out of each tweet and status update.
The more you sell, the less you sell.
I’d like to hear what you think in the comments. Are companies headed down a blind alley by relying too much on social media promotions? Get the Channel Preferences study for free here.
The Real Reason Your Customers Don’t Like You on Facebook
Posted on 26. Sep, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, edison research, exacttarget, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, tom webster
In addition to the controversial redesign of the news feed, and announcements from the f8 conference about the new Timeline profile and app-fueled Graph Rank, was another very interesting Facebook-related development last week.
My friends (and client) ExactTarget released part 10 of their social media research series. This one is called “The Meaning of Like” and analyzes the psychology of consumer use of the “like” button.
(Note that the study was done before Facebook announced that the “like” button would be multiplying like a pair of rabbits on Red Bull, with new “want” “own” “drink” “watch” and “shopping” buttons being spawned).
Although I can see the wisdom (although I use that word in connection with Facebook very loosely) in giving users and companies more specificity in their one-click declarations, #winning with the “like” button alone is pretty damn hard – much less after a severe case of button creep.
How hard is it to win the “like” button game? Data in the free “The Meaning of Like” report shows that 32% of users have never liked a company on Facebook, and 23% of those that have liked a company in the past don’t do so any more.
The Magic 9.8
The average Facebook fan currently “likes” just 9.8 company pages. Nine point eight! I’ve come into contact with (or at least thought about) 50% more brands than that just while authoring the first five paragraphs of this post:
- Apple
- Pro-Form treadmill
- Trekdesk treadmill desk
- Bic pen
- Books from Que, Wiley, Pearson on my desk
- Moleskine
- ExactTarget
- Red Bull
- Spotify
- Audio Technica headphones
- rabbits (not a company, but should start one, and I nominate “the general” from Watership Down as CEO)
How many of those do I currently like on Facebook? Two (and I’ve liked a LOT more than 9.8 company pages in my day).
Likes Don’t Equal Subscriptions
Companies sometimes ask me why they have so few Facebook fans, in comparison to email subscribers and overall customers. If we have 100,000 customers, why don’t we have 100,000 Facebook likes?
Firstly, not every customer is on Facebook. Tom Webster from Edison Research says 52% of Americans are on Facebook, and when Tom Webster talks I listen. So that brings your potential like base to 52,000.
And 32% of users have never liked a company, bringing your theoretical maximum number of Facebook fans to 35,360 (52,000 x 68%).
In most cases, companies aren’t fully committed to promoting their Facebook presence at every turn, meaning that some portion of that 35,560 doesn’t even know you’re on Facebook.
Perhaps most importantly – as underscored by the 9.8 finding, a bunch of your customers – even satisfied ones – don’t think you’re worthy of a like.
Assuming that even your best and most loyal customers will “like” your page is a fallacy, considering you have to battle it out with hundreds of other brands to make it into that “magic 9.8″ likes for the average Facebook user.
Maybe They’re Just Not That Into You
That’s a tall order for every company. Consider: I own two iphones, three ipads, three ipods, and two Mac computers yet I’ve never liked Apple on Facebook.
This defies current conventional wisdom, but the prime objective for your Facebook efforts should not really be to grow your like base, especially through aggressive “like” buying and special offers. Shoot for steady expansion, but recognize that you simply will not be in the “magic 9.8″ for most people.
Instead, you should be redoubling your efforts to activate and encourage the customers who have already liked you. Because while a “like” is just one click, putting you in the “magic 9.8″ is pretty special.
And don’t abuse that vote of confidence. The report shows that 39% of Facebook users do not interpret their own “likes” of a company to equate to permission for that company to deliver marketing messages to the news feed – potentially bad news for the revamped style of applications Facebook announced that will automatically deliver hyper-targeted info to your feed.
I’ve said in the past that the “like” is essentially digital bumper stickering. And now we now just how many stickers will fit on the cars of most Facebook users… 9.8. Our bonds between our Facebook fans and our companies are about to get even more complicated with the announcement that non-fans will now be allowed to post to the Wall, removing one of the rationales for putting you in the magic 9.8 in the first place. Yikes.
Does QR stand for Quasi-Ridiculous? (an analysis)
Posted on 18. Jul, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, exacttarget, Microsoft Tag, mobile, QR codes, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
I understand QR codes are the new “it” thing, the Taylor Lautner of calls-to-action. And indeed, given the increasing ubiquity of smart phones (41% in the U.S. according to new research by my client ExactTarget), many of your potential customers have the capacity to interact with your QR code.
But whether they will or not isn’t about technology adoption, it’s about design, relevance, ease-of-use, and suitability of purpose.
The example above is a bit of mixed bag in this regard.
Design
You certainly know that this ad features a QR code. In fact, the QR code itself is substantially larger than the logo of the company (Crowne Plaza Hotels). If you want to run an expensive national print ad campaign to make sure people think your hotel is all post-modern and zeitgeisty, then I guess this qualifies as killer graphic design. From a branding and behavior likelihood perspective (the QR code dwarfs the URL, which is more likely to be used), this is misplaced design priorities, Exhibit A.
Relevance
Once I get out my magnifying glass to realize this is a promotion for Crowne Plaza hotels, I’m more interested in the overall premise. It took me quite a while to figure out the mechanics of this offer, however. The ginormous headline doesn’t explain anything, and the body copy talks about $75, $300 and includes an asterisk, a URL, two font colors and capitalization on Vacation Pay. Whaaa?
Reading the mouse type at the bottom of the ad tells me the opportunity window for this promotion is until August 31, but it still never explains the $300 reference. After a bit of pondering, I’ve come to believe it means that you can only use this promotion 4 times. Why they wouldn’t say it that way – and why it needs to be said at all in the body copy – is a mystery to me.
Ease-of-Use
Scanning the QR code with your smartphone takes you to a simple form where you ostensibly add your first name, last name, zip, and email address (twice). I tried to submit this form five times, and got an error message every time. Ultimately, I had to go to the website and register there, which negates the advantage of QR in every possible way.
Suitability of Purpose
The only field required on the form is email address. That’s commendable, as we all know that EVERY data point you request has a negative impact on your conversion rate. But if Crowne Plaza only needs email address to register you for this promotion, why use QR at all?
It would be substantially easier – and you’d have a much larger potential audience – if you asked people to simply text message in their email address to sign up. 89% of Americans 15 or older have a phone capable of this action, it would take a lot less of their time to participate, and they wouldn’t get a broken sign-up form.
In fact, I wrote a post years ago about US Airways using SMS to allow passengers to sign up for their frequent flyer program. But that’s when SMS was still cool. QR gets all the love now, and stole the hype from text messaging seemingly overnight.
And marketers are buying it in bulk. I’m as guilty (probably more so) than you, as we included 22 Microsoft Tags (QR’s urbane, proprietary cousin) in our book The NOW Revolution.
I like QR. I like it’s interactivity and tracking and multi-media capabilities. But I don’t like it just to be able to check off “Put a Huge QR Code in Our Print Ad” in a Powerpoint presentation of marketing “wins”. So before you take your mobile efforts to QR-ville, make sure you understand when, why, and how it makes sense.
Agreed?
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