The AI Marketing Companion

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The influence marketing episode Mar 08, 2014

Show notes

As many of our channels for reaching customers are getting strangled, brands are turning to new ways to connect and communicate with customers. One natural opportunity is to align with the authentic advocacy represented by bloggers and other powerful content creators. In an information-dense world where it is more difficult to become the signal instead of the noise, blogger outreach is escalating, providing both financial opportunity and ethical dilemmas. This dynamic provides fascinating and entertaining fodder for the latest Marketing Companion podcast. Tom Webster and I dissect some of the most important issues in the field today like:

Flout: The New Standard for Influence. Really.
Why bloggers are trumping mainstream media
A first-hand account of escalating influence marketing
Why 95 percent brands are stumbling in the influence marketing field
Stepping over the line -- Influencer or infomercial?
How to create raving advocates the right way

Hey! I'm ready to listen to this all over again! Are you ready?

Where does social media fit in the marketing mix? Feb 21, 2014

Show notes

A number of news items coalesced recently and made me wonder ... what is the true role of social media in the marketing mix today? How has it changed? Is it really about connection? Is it still a way to engage with customers? Or, has it been so overrun by agencies and programmed content that it is little more than advertising? Maybe you have been wondering the same thing? This is such a vital topic that Tom Webster and I decided to tackle this on the latest edition of The Marketing Companion. Have you listened to our podcast yet? If not, please give it a try. We always aim to deliver entertaining and thought ideas to help you through the latest marketing trends and you might have some fun along the way, too. In this edition, we explore:

The time element --- social media versus advertising
Estimating the sales power of social media
Weak links versus strong links and how this converts to sales
The correlation between share of conversation and market share
Social media at the top of the sales cycle and at the end of it
Is social media more like advertising or marketing?
A case study illustrating the impression power of social media
How will social media platforms re-invent themselves to ignite a "wow factor?"

Yes, we covered a lot of ground in just 30 minutes! Are you ready to give this a listen?

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading: A Comprehensive Guide to the Most Persuasive Psychological Manipulation Technique in the World

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy

Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy

The results are in: A case study of social influence

Posts about Esurance Super Bowl ads referenced to in the podcast

Why the little guy won marketing's biggest prize

The missing link between awareness and action

The mind-boggling lunacy of people who were impressed with Esurance's Super Bowl ad

Tips for leveraging public speaking in your marketing mix Feb 07, 2014

Show notes

Over the past decade, companies and executives have re-discovered the power of incorporating public speaking into the marketing mix. Some of the advantages include:

Creating high-quality content that can be leveraged in many places
Cost-effective way to reach a targeted audience with a message
Good PR opportunities.
Building a personal brand that also can accentuate a product and company brand (think of Richard Branson)
Leveraging a position of personal thought leadership to promote a company

This growing trend has impacted marketing strategies and transformed the professional speaking industry. One speaker told me that it is more difficult getting high-level paying engagements now because so many companies are willing to offer their executives as speakers for free. This opportunity is not often evaluated in terms of marketing strategy so Tom Webster and I thought it would be an ideal topic for our latest edition of The Marketing Companion podcast. We had a lot of fun on this episode and begin by rolling out a new content marketing "product" that includes "Breaking Bieber." You have to hear it to believe it! But we also roll up our sleeves and get into a discussion full of tips on how you can be more effective in adding public speaking to your marketing mix:

Ideas on how to be a more effective and entertaining presenter
Structuring your speech for maximum impact
Overcoming nerves -- The introvert's guide to public speaking
Rule the slides -- Keys to preparation
Is your speech intellectual property that needs to be protected or do you want it to go viral?
Leveraging speaking-related content in other marketing formats

Are you ready to rumble? Of course you are!

Folks mentioned in this podcast:

Mitch Joel

Tom Martin

Tamsen Webster

Leadership is not a dirty word Jan 24, 2014

Show notes

When I was in graduate school I took a class that examined the qualities of leadership. I have to make a confession ... the only reason I took it was because I thought it was going to be an easy blow-off class! I was completely wrong. This turned out to be one of the most interesting and inspiring classes of my career and it ignited a lifetime of study on the subject. It turned me into a leadership junky.

My fascination with this subject was one of the reasons that drove me to write Return On Influence. I became obsessed with this idea -- how do you become a leader on the Internet -- a place that HATES leaders! Trying to understand those changes was a lot of fun and believe me, leadership DOES exist on the Internet, whether people want it or not. To a large extent, I think the "You're not my boss" attitude of social media has made the idea of leadership an unpopular concept. I see this anti-leadership mentality dripping from online posts and comments.

And, to some extent, the attitude may have been codified when Zappos recently announced that it was eliminating titles and organizational charts. This was too good of a topic to pass up for me and I think you'll enjoy the discussion Tom Webster and I have on this topic on the newest edition of our Marketing Companion podcast. But that's just the beginning. Tom and I cover a lot of ground in this edition. As you may know, a recent post I wrote called Content Shock went crazy.

Suddenly, I felt like I had become the center of attention for a large portion of the marketing dialogue. When we recorded this episode of the podcast, the personal implications of all this attention and the clubbiness of the social web were weighing on my mind. This led into a discussion of "content curation" versus "content assembly." Is curation a legitimate way to stand out today? Isn't every move Google makes HURTING the idea of curating content as a strategy? Tom does a great job in this podcast providing some tips for skillful content curation.

Are you ready for some podcasting fun? Well, wait no longer.

Overcoming Content Shock: Beating information density Jan 10, 2014

Show notes

Over the past few weeks the interweb airwaves have been humming and buzzing with data pointing to the increasing costs of getting your content seen and distributed through an over-crowded web.

In a recent Advertising Age article, Facebook reports: "Content that is eligible to be shown in our news feed is increasing at a faster rate than people's ability to consume it."
A study by InboundWriter shows only 10 to 20 percent of a company's website content drives 90 percent of its online traffic.
Social platforms are creating programs to highlight organic content from the brands that spend the most money on their ads. So paid ads and sponsored content will soon be driving the "organic" reach of content.
Reports claim the price of social media monitoring is going up because there is so much more content to process
According to a recent IZEA survey, 61 percent of marketers have paid "influencers" to mention their product and share their content.
According to a LexisNexis (client) study on International Workplace Productivity, 62% of white collar workers admit that the quality of their work suffers because they can't sort through the information they need fast enough.

All of these trends support the idea of a "Content Shock" that is coming -- if it isn't here already -- for many businesses. Businesses who just pump out more content -- even "better" content -- are engaging in a strategy that is becoming increasingly difficult because the cost to succeed is going up, up, up. What are you going to do about it? That is really the dialogue that has to be happening next, right? And that is the conversation that begins here, in this new edition of the Marketing Companion podcast I created with Tom Webster. We start with a little fun, introducing a new idea called "Prickstarter" and then get into some pretty deep ideas about content and audience that includes:

The advantage of "ether" in the marketplace
The decline of RSS and the coming Age of the Great Algorithm
Media is media. Integrating channels to present one message to your customers is a key idea.
Audience is not the same as "buyer" -- Creating personas may be an out-dated strategy?
A focus on emotional ties and "human" as a competitive strategy
Bronies and the Celine Dion play -- you just have to hear it to believe it
Passionate content versus content and why "helpful" is not a point of differentiation

Pretty amazing, right?

Resources mentioned in this podcast

Comment from Ken Rosen that served as an example of Content Shock

Three phases of the web reference from Microsoft's Dean Hauchomovitch Shel Holtz post on consumer view of Content Shock

Christopher Penn discussion on owned, earned and paid media

Website of Dr. Robert Cialdini

Website of Voices Heard Media

Illustration courtesy BigStock.com

This content was created as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I've been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Facebook reach, a massive breach and influence marketing steps up Dec 28, 2013

Show notes

In our latest Marketing Companion Podcast, Tom Webster and I examine three ripped-from-the-headlines topics critical to digital marketing: A decline in Facebook reach?

-- New research from several sources indicates that Facebook algorithmic tweaks could be dramatically depressing the visibility of brand posts to their audiences. We dissect this data and discuss whether this is real or something that could actually get much worse.

Are we safe? -- Our last podcast covered 2014 marketing trends and I predicted that the "malignant complexity" of Internet systems would provoke more attacks to a vulnerable system.

We look at the recent Target breach -- 40 million credit card profiles were stolen -- and an analyst remark that indicates something even more sinister could be going on here.

Influence marketing trends -- An influence marketing company released some eye-popping data about the number of marketers who are actively paying influencers to promote their brands.

The trajectory of this trend is remarkable and strikes at the heart of some moral issues of content creators. I think this will be a profound topic for 2014 and beyond and I think you will enjoy this lively debate!

Are you ready for this? Of course you are!

Here is the podcast, at your service:

References in this podcast:

Jim Tobin article on Facebook reach

Agora Pulse article on Facebook reach

Scott Stratten

Six mind-blowing marketing trends Dec 13, 2013

Show notes

This not your normal 2014 forecast post about Facebook advertising and "the year of mobile" (yawn). Tom Webster and I put our heads together to really think through some of the implications of what we're seeing out there and the six projections we developed are not exactly run of the mill social media fare. I think you are going to really enjoy our latest Marketing Companion podcast. It is going to surprise, and perhaps even startle, you.

The podcast starts out with a visit from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christian Bale (you have to hear it to believe it!) and then untangles six marketing mega-trends:

1) Malignant complexity

2) Re-aggregation of audience

3) The cost of security

4) The death of "last touch" attribution and implications for search and offline marketing

5) Dis-intermediation of manufacturing (the biggest impact on marketing since the Internet?)

6) Atomization of content This podcast is guaranteed to get you thinking about our marketing future in new ways.

What's that you say? You can't wait to dive into it?

Well I certainly can't blame you so here it is in stunning high-definition technicolor:

References in this podcast:

The password management tool is Dashlane.

The perils and promise of sponsored content Nov 29, 2013

Show notes

Sponsored content is probably the hottest -- and most controversial -- marketing trend around. Embedding advertising messages in the editorial portion of online properties is an act of desperation -- Traditional advertising is in decline as technology allows people to avoid ads The fact of the matter is that sponsored content works best when you don't know it's an ad. This raises so many questions about best practices, disclosure and regulations. On our new Marketing Companion podcast, Tom Webster and I tear this issue apart from every angle:

Does sponsored content demonstrate that the advertising industry is in crisis?
Sponsored content -- only effective if it's sneaky?
Will the FTC regulate this trend?
Is a company blog sponsored content? Where do you draw the line?
Will sponsored content bolster confidence in a brand or jeopardize it?
Is this trend necessary to save traditional media? Ad agencies?
Radical honesty as a point of differentiation.
When do guest posts become sponsored content?
Could sponsored content actually be better than organic content?

This is a vital and fascinating topic and by this point you are probably ready to go. Well, here it is: By the way, if you are enjoying our podcast, why not let others know by leaving a rating on the iTunes site. It's so simple and much appreciated!

How data is screwing up content marketing Nov 09, 2013

Show notes

An early Google Pants sighting[/caption] Companies like Forrester and Gartner -- who used to make their money providing expensive and exclusive research reports -- are finding it impossible to "contain" the data. If somebody buys just one report, it's likely to very soon be distributed widely on the web for free.

As a result, there is a very subtle but important change going on in the world of research with profound implications for what we can see and believe on the social web. In our latest Marketing Companion podcast, Tom Webster and I explore some of the implications of this as we look at a case study where Forrester recently skewered Facebook with some provocative, but not necessarily accurate, claims.

A company VP added fuel to the fire with an "open letter" to Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook called the claims "irresponsible." Why would a company built on providing dispassionate data and insight make a sensational move like this?

Data and research are certainly taking on an interesting new role in the field of content marketing. Some of the ideas we discuss in the podcast ... If companies can't make as much money from their research, are they using their data as a content marketing promotional tool?

If businesses won't pay for research, what happens to the quality of the research? What can we really believe right now and how do we know if the claims we are looking at on the web are to be believed?

Most important of all, how is Tom Webster getting rich from Google Pants and Smithfield Hams?

At this point, you might be asking, "How can I listen to this gem of a podcast right now?" I'm happy to report that all you have to do is click this button:

By the way, if you are enjoying our podcast, why not let others know by leaving a rating on the iTunes site. It's so simple and much appreciated!

A Forecast for Podcasting: Trends, Predictions and Google Pants Oct 26, 2013

Show notes

Podcasting, which traces its roots back to "audioblogging" in the 1980s, has enjoyed a renaissance as smart phones have become nearly ubiquitous. But what does the future hold? The great hope for podcasting might be the emotional, immersive nature of the medium. It's a rich content relationship, not a digital "snack" and a unique opportunity to provide both entertainment and information. A podcast is a companion and the engagement level might make it ideal for business development.

Now that Tom Webster and I have 10 episodes of The Marketing Companion podcast under our belts, we thought it would be a good time to take a fresh look at the state of podcasting and its future. We also debut our line of clothing and exciting wearable technology: Google Pants. You have to hear it to believe it. By the way, if you would like to be a part of the podcast, email me an audio file with your comment or question and it might make it into an upcoming show. This week's podcast covers a lot of ground, including:

The latest data on podcasting popularity and usage
The promise of blogging to your ears
Some of the problems and promises of podcasting
Surprising observations about podcasting demographics and metrics
Technologies and trends that could ignite podcasting
The future of podcasting -- Mark and Tom disagree.
Podcasting as a source of business leads

... and much more. Ready? Set? Well then, here you go:

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