|
____________
Cool Websites
to Explore
Mashable.com A news website featuring social media but also covering mobile and other digital technology, Mashable was named by Time magazine as one of the top 25 blogs of 2009. Be sure to bookmark it, or better yet, add an RSS feed to your Google Reader or FeeddlerRSS page.
TechCrunch.com is another website that reports on all things digital, from social media to mobile. Subjects on its title bar are Startups, Mobile, Gadgets, Social, Video, More. They also sponsor the annual "Crunchies" awards, featuring categories like "Best Technology Achievement," "Best Social App" and "Best Cloud Services." Oddly, there's no RSS icon on the page.
IAB.net The tagline for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is "dedicated to the growth of interactive advertising." The organization develops industry standards and conducts extensive research that it makes available free on its website. It sets the guidelines for web ad sizes and specifications and features white papers and news about issues such as privacy and mobile advertising. Free reports include the Mobile Marketing Playbook and the Social Marketing Playbook. (Note: it should be called the "Social Media" playbook-see this month's feature article).
Marketingsherpa.com, founded by Dana VanDen Heuvel (who spoke at an NMAMA luncheon a few years back), is chockfull of goodies to help guide you through the social world. It includes blogs, articles, benchmark reports, handbooks, and a slew of other information sources, some free and some for purchase.
Emarketer.com Want to know how much marketers are spending on mobile? Interested in whether or not consumers spend more time with TV or the Internet? Emarketer.com provides answers to questions like these. The company provides research and analysis on digital marketing and media and marketing trends. Subscribe to the daily newsletter and get regular updates.
ComSCORE.com
ComSCORE is an Internet market research company. It collects data and creates reports such as comSCORE "Next-Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials."
|
Have a topic you'd like to see covered in a future issue of Connect, or a PR question?
Write us at:editor@cooneywatson.com
|
|
A fun little comic strip from February 1913 -- precise communication was just as important then as it is now! Click on the strip to enlarge.
|
|
This month's newsletter is meant to catch you up on the rapidly evolving digital world, especially social media, and help you stay caught up.
Our feature article talks about the difference between social media and social marketing-terms that people often misuse. We also tell you about three social media tools no one should be without. Finally, the sidebar takes you on a quick tour of a handful of websites that are indispensible in keeping up with technology and new media.
________________________________________________________
|
|
|
Social marketing and social media ...
are they one and the same?
By Dana Bloomquist
Imprecision drives me crazy.
I despise words like provide, for example. This particular word has too many meanings to have any real value in communication. I believe it's better to choose a word that is clear and precise and specific to the context.
Recently, I've found complete misunderstanding and misuse of the term social marketing. Even "professional marketers" are touting their social marketing experience when, in fact, they are talking about their skills in using such tools as Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn in marketing for their clients.
So let's be clear in our definitions.
Social media is a group of web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into two-way dialogue. Social media marketing is using social media to spread a message, or "sell" a product or idea to current or potential constituents (customers, employees, clients, patients, etc.).
(READ MORE)
_________________________________________________________ |
Tip of the Month: Three Digital Tools You Can't Live WithoutWith thousands of online newspapers, more than 200 million blogs, every conceivable nonsense word being used for social media websites, and now more than 500,000 iPhone apps, how can one make sense of it all? Here are three tools that will help you break through the clutter of the digital airwaves and manage your digital life.  HootSuite
Launched in December, 2008, HootSuite is used to manage online brands and to submit messages to Twitter. According to Wikipedia, companies like Facebook, the Obama administration and Martha Stewart use HootSuite. HootSuite also provides a browser-based dashboard that allows users to keep updated on their Twitter account. There are both full and 'lite' versions of the service. HootSuite uses the URL shortener ow.ly to shorten URLs submitted to its service.  FeeddlerRSS
FeeddlerRSS is a mobile app that works with Google Reader to enable you to set up a single place for all your RSS feeds. (For the uninitiated, an RSS feed-Real Simple Syndication -- is a web feed format that distributes news headlines and other information.) Let's say you're originally from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and you miss your home town. Just click on the RSS icon on the Punxsutawney Spirit home page and load it onto Google Reader. It will update itself automatically and appear on your FeeddlerRSS mobile app. Next you might want to add the NY Times, or PC Week or the Huffington Post. You can put all of these on your Feeddler page and read all of your updated news sources in one place. Another way you can use Feeddler RSS is to create a dashboard to monitor the social network. Just load the RSS feeds onto your dashboard and see what people are saying about your company.  Socialmention.com
Socialmention.com is like Google for social media. Type in a keyword search and blogs, microblogs, networks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio and questions. It will show the source that the comments came from (e.g., YouTube, Yahoo, etc.), top keywords, top sources and sentiment (whether it was positive, negative or neutral). It's ideal for monitoring what's being said about your company, a competitor or issue. You can also receive free daily alerts (much like Google alerts), except for social media. ________________________________________________________ |
 (Social Marketing continued)
So then, what is social marketing? Social marketing was developed as a discipline in the 1970s. Simply put, it is using marketing principles to "sell" attitudes, ideas and behaviors. Some call it marketing "to promote social good." In their textbook titled "Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life," authors Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto and Nancy Lee define social marketing as: "... the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups or society as a whole." The authors go on to point out that social marketing is most often used to influence an audience to change behavior to improve health, prevent injuries, protect the environment or contribute to the community. How do commercial marketing and social marketing differ? - It's all about the product. Commercial marketing activities deal with goods or services, while social marketing efforts involve individual or group behavior change.
- It's all about the outcome. Commercial marketing focuses on financial gain for the selling organization. Social marketing emphasizes individual or societal gain realized because of changes in behavior.
- It's all about what or whom we're competing against. In commercial marketing, the competition is a similar product offered by a different organization, or a different use for the money that would be spent to purchase the product we are selling. In social marketing, the competition is the current behavior, or a behavior that is preferred over the one we are trying to promote.
As in commercial marketing, social marketing is not top-down -- trying to get an audience to buy a product they may or may not have interest in. Rather, it is bottom up, or consumer-driven. In other words, we speak directly with our target audience to learn the needs, desires and barriers that relate to the "product" we are tasked with marketing. We then address those needs in the marketing mix, also known as the 4 Ps (product, price, place and promotion). How does social marketing work? Here's a very basic description of the social marketing process. We know that early detection of breast cancer generally increases the survival rate. So, why is it that many women don't get screened? Our first step is to review all the information we already have about the issue. We'll look at statistics for age, ethnicity, access to care, insurance, etc. From this information, we will identify the characteristics of the women we wish to target. Second, we will conduct research with these women. We will ask questions about why they don't get screened, trying to isolate the specific reasons or barriers. We will also try to learn what would encourage them to change their behavior to the desired behavior (getting regular screenings). Our next step in the social marketing process is to develop a proposed health care intervention (an activity that encourages behavior change) and/or promotional campaign based on what we learned in our research. (Cooney, Watson and Associates has developed dozens of these campaigns.) Before implementation, we will present the concepts to our original target audience and ask if the intervention or campaign would generate the desired behavior change. Our goal is to tailor the activities to audience needs and tastes, so that they will actually make the change. After all, they, and people like them, are our customers! Once we have made any changes to accommodate the feedback our target audience has given us, we will implement the campaign. A means to evaluate would be built in to the implementation so that, after an appropriate period of time, we can determine the success of our activities. It's strategy vs. tactics Boiling it down, social marketing is a specialized activity, but it is very similar to the marketing activities we perform for all our clients. Research, branding, messaging, placement, promotion - all are critical to the development of any good marketing campaign. Done well, they will meet your customers' needs and desires, and assure your organization's success. How does social media fit? Like any other media - broadcast media, print media, electronic media - it is simply a tool. It's the means through which we present and manage our messages. Putting it precisely, marketing (both commercial and social) is strategy ... and media is tactics. Precision is good. ________________________________________________________ |
|
CLIENTS IN THE NEWS...Congratulations to Katherine Yuhas, water conservation officer of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, who is among 25 New Mexicans to be honored as "Women of Influence" by the New Mexico Business Weekly. Also, kudos to Brad Steward, CPA, a shareholder in Pulakos CPAs, for recently passing a rigorous admissions process and examination to earn the prestigious Certified Construction Industry Financial Professional (CCIFP) designation. Pat Boyle, RN, MSN, executive director of the New Mexico Center for Nursing Excellence, was recently interviewed in nurse.com about the Center's ongoing efforts to bring nurses together for action, collaboration and communication to advance the profession of nursing throughout the state. Joel Carson III, Nancy Franchini and Ray Vargas II have been appointed as new members of the New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission (JPEC), a volunteer, nonpartisan commission to improve the performance of New Mexico's judges and provide useful, credible information to voters on judges standing for retention elections.
|
|
|
|
|
