[en]

On December 1 Ryan Seacrest, Lady Gaga, Serena Williams and Justin Timberlake will stop tweeting and posting on facebook. Videos of their deaths will be posted online where people will be able to see them in their coffins. All of this has been organized by Alicia Keys and will not stop until $1 million dollars is raised.A project organized by Alicia keys for her charity Keep a Child Alive will have millions of people deprived of their celebrities’ social media musings for as long as it takes. The likes of Justin Timberlake, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Serena Williams and Jennifer Hudson will remain absolutely silent on their Facebook and Twitter account/pages until $1 million dollars is raised by the charity. This interesting strategy will happen as part of the Wold AIDS Day fundraiser on December 1.

The celebrities will feature videos of them in a coffin to, as the AP describes “represent what the campaign calls their digital deaths.” Those videos will in theory be tweeted out right before the celebrities sign off to help raise awareness.

More innovative ideas are expected to come up as we get closer to World AIDS Day. Last year, Keys streamed a concert live via YouTube to raise money for her charity. Twitter, Facebook and Google customized their sites to show support for World AIDS Day.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

[es]

La comunicación y accesibilidad lo es todo para las Medios Sociales. Facilitar al cliente la información de nuestro producto y servicios son el objetivo principal.

Para entender a que me refiero con Comunicación, Colaboración y Conveniencia es necesario plantear la siguiente pregunta, ¿Cuándo fué la última vez que adquirimos un producto y nos encontramos en la situación de no saber usarlo de forma correcta o con la necesidad de atención por alguna dificultad?

Lo que dicta nuestra satisfacción con la experiencia se define más o menos así:

• ¿Qué solución se ofrecía?
• La solución que se ofrecía, ¿era conveniente para mí?
• ¿Había formas de comunicación accesibles?
• ¿Qué medios se utilizaron para dar soluciones?
• ¿Quedé satisfecho con el servicio?
• ¿Qué haría para mejorarlo?
• ¿Qué me convenció más, el producto ó el servicio?

Este, es el proceso de compras por el que todos pasamos al adquirir servicios ó productos y si podemos sacar provecho de nuestra experiencia de consumo aplicando el sentido común en nuestra estrategia de ventas el resultado lógico será:

• Mayor número de ventas.
• Fidelidad de parte del cliente.
• Clientes de calidad.
• Mejor presencia de Marca de su negocio, no solo del producto ó servicio.

Recordemos que hoy en día, los negocios dependemos de la rápida comunicación y la accesibilidad para resolver los problemas a nuestros clientes.

Comunicación, Colaboración y Conveniencia

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

[en]

A common misconception is that social media in the Hispanic markets is not as important as it is in Canada or the USA. Certainly, it will be hard for Colombians, Mexican, Chileans or Spanish people to prefer a primarily English based social media website. A lot of them do use the same websites as people in US or Canada, but there a few differences in choices that completely different and unknown to most English speaking users.

One question that comes a lot is: Is there a LinkedIn market in Latam or Spain? The answer is: Of course! (Don´t need to be a guru to know that one). Now the issue here is that there aren´t as many Spanish speaking users in LinkedIn as one would expect. So, where are they?

One big trend for business people is to use a site called Xing.com. Now, Xing didn´t open the Spanish market, in fact, Xing is originally German, but has been purchasing other social networks in many countries to grow its base. Such is the case with what used to be known as Neurona.com (which now redirects to Xing). Neurona used to be big in Mexico and Spain until it was bought by Xing and all its users were migrated into the new platform.

Anyhow, the point is that to get in touch with business people in Spanish speaking countries, the social network to use is Xing.com (although LinkedIn is beginning to get some attention too).

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

This is the future of Social Media. Better than Facebook and better than Youtube it creates a mix of both that will ensure better quality, entertainment and socialization.

Check this out. Its the next big wave in social media and all interested in promoting themselves should consider getting an account, NOW. This is what is hitting the internet soon and will make the world of social media spin on its tail and perhaps will create a new way of communication and sharing. To understand it, open this post and watch the video explaining it.

Gink is the product of DerrickComedy. Great talent, great work, go check it out in their website.

So, will you join Gink?

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

There is a big chunk of people that are interested in talking about “personal brands” and how you can market yourself as a professional in almost any field to connect with possible customers and your current customers. Personal branding is sort of like when the local car dealer shows up on TV and screams at you while wearing a funny hat and ridding an elephant and when you go to their car lots, you get to see the same yelling, screaming guy sell cars with the funny hat. Not necessarily good, but it creates a “personal brand”.

In the more serious side, personal brands are about creating an identity by which people can recognize you. The most important part of it is to take your original self, think hardly on what makes you unique and accentuate what people say they like about you. If people think you are honest and smart, use it wisely. If people think you are funny and charismatic, that’s your key. Or you may focus in one particular element of your personality, some little quirk that makes you memorable, you can laugh at yourself, be dead serious or just plain weird. The most important part of this is that you are able to project the exact same concept to everyone who meets you, anywhere you showcase yourself, like blogs, websites, social sites’ profiles, business cards and even TV ads. There a zillion tips you can find about personal branding that may or may not help, what matters the most is that when you want to make yourself a brand, you have to know who and what you represent and project it always. This also works for job hunting.

Another way of personal brand is what some major companies are doing now. Their brands are becoming “personal”. First in mind, HP… their new mantra is “the computer is personal… again” and they are going to great lengths to improve their customer care service, as a business, you can even get a personal case manager to help you on whatever needs you have from the first purchase. They are hardly alone, we are very familiar with Steve Jobs, who represents Apple and their toys. We know Mat Cutts who is one of Google’s big faces.

The concept is not new. Traditional advertisement has know for the longest time that if you have a person who represents your brand is a great way to connect with people. It is even better than having a slogan or a logo, that person becomes the brand. The big downside to that is that the person may not always be there. Companies tend to chew and spit employees, and on the other side, employees tend to go to better opportunities.* So, how can you create a “presonal brand” experience?

Social Media gives you the best tools out there for this effect. Using twitter to listen to your clients, having excellent use of email for customer service and promotion, using blogs from employees and the company to promote beliefs, products and services, have a facebook page to let people know of promotions and new products, using LinkedIn for people to connect and know the big guys of the company and even the small guys. Learning to listen as a general rule of thumb works just well.

Internet pushes harder than other marketing media to this point. With TV you mainly show and talk. With Radio you talk. With newspaper you write (which is like talking). With the internet, you HAVE to listen. If you try to use the web to push all your stuff, you will hardly be successful. People don’t come to the web to get hassled by ads. We come to  find information, stay in touch and do business.

To create personal brands, companies only need to learn to listen. Chris Brogan, an excellent blogger and social media expert, says that you have to listen and make it more about others than you to actually shine through. Listen to what your customers say, good or bad, learn from it, show that you are listening and do something about it.

So, some examples of how to listen:

In twitter: Use tools that allow you to tack mentions of your brands and products as well as subject your company is interested in.
In Facebook: Have your page and when people join, invite them to provide feedback, ask them questions, offer discounts or prizes for feedback.
In your website: Promote feedback. Give prizes or enter people into a raffle if they provide feedback or comments. Ask for opinions, have polls on your website.
In general: Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Take the good and the bad, remove the spam and learn from it. You’ll be a better company for it.

Finally, ’cause I’m a great believer in feedback. Let me know how I’m doing, good or bad and I promise to improve as best as I can.

*I do believe that the more you empower people in your organization and make them feel important, that what they do counts, people will tend to have higher loyalty to your company. By giving them a chance to take ownership of the brand, you give them a chance to be something, to do better and to have a bigger impact, you give people a chance to be someone and part of something they can  believe in. In this idea, giving people a voice to represent your company is not that crazy. They will represent it anyway, whether you like it or not.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

This little update to my previous post is because I’ve been asked to clear my point about the Social media lesson. The reason for this blog to exist is to shed some light into the intricacies of the internet marketing world and hopefully, help someone with their own marketing efforts. My previous post had exactly that intention, although not very clearly defined.Even though the examples in the MSNBC.com article/gallery are extreme and mainly for fun and entertainment, the examples illustrate how the same social blunders of the real world affect the interactions in social media. Most people over-think social media strategies and forget about the simplest and most basic rules of social interaction, just to later wonder why the campaign is not flying as high as expected. Facebook, linkedin,

The lesson is: always follow the rules of social interaction. If you are not very adept in social interaction, most likely you will not be very apt for social media.

Hope this clarifies my previous post, if not, just let me know and I’ll be glad to go deeper into this subject.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Social media has enabled us to keep in contact with close friends and family. It has also given us an interesting insight into other people’s minds and of course, we can’t avoid finding some serious blunders and fatal mistakes that may be disastrous to the person who did it, but very funny to all those watching.So, for the delight of my two or three readers, please enjoy the following gallery from Jerry Langton at MSN Tech & Gadgets news. There is much to learn for some people, hope this helps any of you stay out of social media trouble.

— Update — Read the update to this article to clarify some doubts that were raised from this my very short post.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Just heard today that Digg is launching a new feature:

Digg trends.

Now, this is an interesting little addition, here’s what Digg says about it:

Digg Trends is a new feature on Digg that highlights active upcoming
stories that haven't yet hit the homepage. The concept is simple:
stories that have received a lot of activity in a short period of
time (Diggs, comments, etc.) will now appear in a special section at
the top of the homepage for ten minutes. You can then Digg or bury
the story, and depending on your vote recorded within those ten
minutes, the story will either become popular or not.

This is a neat feature as will provide temporary exposure to some stories that usually don’t make it to the homepage.

On a side note, Digg is getting on Twitter too. These days it seems that most businesses are getting on with Twitter, although according to traffic trends, Twitter’s traffic has actually decreased in the last two months for the first time since it opened for business.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

This is an interview by Cali Lewis from GeekBrief.tv. Our marketing approach should understand the numbers, but we must learn to see people as people and not just a bunch of data. See what Chris has to say about this and pay special attention to the results of a well done Twitter sale (the one about car services). If you can’t see the video,click here.

So, hear what master Brogan has to say and practice it. If you are a marketing guy or are trying to promote your company, remember that the best results in marketing are obtained when honesty, integrity and loyalty (to the customers) are practiced.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Bing Tweets - Twitter to show in Bing

Direct from Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, we receive news of the future in search. What is being called “real time search” which involves using data from Twitter, facebook and similar services to include information currently surging about a search. In this regard, Bing has taken a big step forward by securing a deal with Twitter to include Tweets in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

There is also a deal with Facebook, but details about this have not been provided.

Want to see the beta? See it here.

This change in search will mean that using social media will become more important than ever. You will be able to see twitter feeds related to a link directly from the search without having to visit the social site to get the details. This adds a new perspective as people will be actually talking live about a subject and those comments will be shown in real time while you search.

For marketing this has many implications, simply starting from developing new ways of promoting a service and the fact that exposure to bad press will be more than an uncomfortable reality. Companies who don’t take care of their clients or have disgruntled customers will now be exposed live and online.

We can easily imagine coming out of a retail store where we dealt with a more than unfriendly salesperson, pulling out the phone and immediately tweeting about the bad experience to let the world know. Every user online searching for that store or a product from that store will be immediately exposed to that tweet. This may or may not influence the other users’ decision to visit the store or buy online from it, but the store has no control over what is said. The only control may be giving good service and reasonable prices.

Another application for this new offering is related to what has been happening with microblogging services. Twitter has allowed for people to report events as they happen. Many important journalists have their twitter account and constantly tweet about new articles and things happening around. Now, the tweets will no longer be circumscribed to Twitter.com, anyone (even those who presently are twitterless) will be exposed to what people are saying about the subject and in time, the tendency will be to finally fall to the pressure and get an account in Twitter.

Its an interesting time to be online. The brave will establish themselves, the rest will follow. Where is your company today?

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

More about this from the blogosphere:

Ben Parr

Chris Crum

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.