PR Communications

Marketing Insights From Alice Stein

Marketing is a tough concept to get your mind around. Many people believe it's the process of selling more stuff, while others me included, believe marketing is the process of understanding customer needs so you can develop a Product, Price, Place and Promotion to need those needs and sell more stuff. For example, Steve Jobs is a great marketer because he is fanactical about developing products that meet unmet needs.

Alice Stein is a marketer in my camp, she is constantly striving to push the envelope when it comes to understanding how marketing works, and what processes you need to set up to be successful. I met Alice in Boston when I was involved in the board for the American Marketing Association. I've left the Boston area for Greensboro, NC, but Alice is still on the board in Boston as VP of Membership. Alice was kind enough to answer a few questions recently about her background, marketing and her plans for the future.

John: What's your background in marketing?

Alice: My professional background includes marketing, web and business strategy.  I’ve held senior management roles at both start-ups and global corporations, specifically within professional and financial services and e-commerce.  Simply stated… I’m a multi-disciplined marketer who has worked with all sorts of stakeholders in creating awareness and driving sales for some very cool brands. In my ”free time”,  I am involved on the board of the American Marketing Association (Boston Chapter).

John: How has digital publishing changed marketing in the last 10 years?

Alice: Digital publishing 10 years ago was associated with desktop/web publishing and developers would “publish” web pages to online servers. Now digital publishing refers to electronic content like videos, books, articles, and in many cases this content is presented in an interactive way. Take for example the new reincarnation of the Amazon Kindle.  It was brilliant for Amazon to expand the Kindle concept and create a Kindle app readily available to anyone using a mobile device.

John: How has the role of the marketer changed over the last 5 years?

Alice: Social media has given rise to online influencers, who I refer to as the “cyber influentials” of our society. These influentials freely distribute opinions about specific brands and may or may not be paid brand evangelists (though in the cases where they are paid, this fact must be disclosed for legal purposes). The rise of the “cyber influentials” creates a huge power shift away from the marketer who at one point actually “managed” the positioning statements associated with their brand. Now with so many conversations taking place concurrently, marketers in some cases take the role of mediators/referees, while the clever marketers know how to harness the power of the influential class. Five years ago, this complete loss of control over your brand message was virtually unknown. Today, employers as just one example monitor sites like www.jobvent.com in order to track the trending perceptions of their employer brand. Sites like these were rarely on the marketing radar back in 2005.

John: What do you see is the future of marketing?

Alice: In the future, I see the marketing function delineating into two separate roles: marketing support and product strategy. For organizations driven by commodity rather than customer value, the marketing role becomes more support driven and centers around shorter term goals. In a customer-centric/ value-driven organization, the marketing function is constantly evolving and plays a critical role in product strategy. Often times, these value-driven organizations shy away from quick wins and opt for a long term value proposition, which also builds loyal customers.

Organizations like Apple and Jetblue come to mind when I think about value-driven organizations.
These types of firms focus their efforts on building customer value, which in turn creates tremendous opportunity for the marketing function to play a key role in shaping the product. You can already see this type of functional change happening in many service oriented businesses. The appointment of a Chief Experience Officer at Cleveland Clinic is just one example of the functional evolution of the marketing role. The future of marketing and its ability to shape product strategy (rather than exist as a support arm of Sales or other departments) will rely on the ability of marketing to evolve quickly and transition from brand evangelists to customer evangelists.

Perhaps it’s actually the marketing team who holds the magic bullet for solving the U.S. innovation dilemma?

John: What's next for you?

Alice: After more than half a decade with one of the world’s largest HR services, it’s time for me to pursue my next parachute. The ideal position for me would leverage my background in multi-disciplined branding and professional services. Wherever I end up, the corporate culture should be passionate, fun and smart. There’s nothing more exciting than coming to work and working with exceptional people on exceptional, value-driven products.

If you enjoyed the blog (or perhaps the content acted as a great sedative for you), feel free to connect: alice(at)amaboston DOT org :: @citymindful

Simple. Smart. A review of the new Nook Color

There's been a lot of hype about the iPad and tablets, but before Apple's venture Amazon.com launched the Kindle, and helped open up the eReader market.

Given the iPad is only a year old, the device has had a big impact on media consumption, I think it's a truly innovative device. But not everyone can afford tablets, or may want to use the lower cost eReaders for different purposes than a tablet. eReaders for reading books; and tablets for surfing the web and reading online magazine apps.

eReaders certainly have a future, but there's competition beyond the Kindle. Barnes & Noble's Nook. Here's a guest article about the Nook from a friend in content marketing, Matt Mullen, a freelance writer, who has a background in writing, editing and public relations.

Enjoy.

- John

I fancy myself a competent player in our digital age, but I sometimes become frustrated by the tendency of manufacturers to drop a lethally complicated device in your lap with an instruction manual that, in 247 pages, still manages to avoid guidance on the most basic of operations.

Take a recent battle with my digital video camera. After reading the manual, I felt sure the camera had enough features to make my unsteadily shot home movies look like the sequel to “Avatar,” but the instructions didn’t mention how to get anything to play back in my DVD player, which to me seemed a pretty critical element in a camera package. After an hour of research and the download of a couple of software programs that crashed my computer, my biopic, “The Deviled Egg and I: One Man’s Love Affair With Thanksgiving Dinner,” remains solely available for screening on my laptop.

In light of that experience, it’s refreshing to say that, after receiving the new Barnes & Noble Nook Color as a Christmas gift, I’ve discovered that I really like it, primarily because it’s simple to operate but also because it’s a cheap and easy way to get classic books, it’s a capable magazine reader and it makes a great device for reading the newspaper.

On opening the package, feeling slightly glum over the obligation to learn to use another new high-tech device, I was greeted with a “Quick Start Guide” which spelled out, in simple terms, how to turn the Nook on, charge it, hook it up to my Wi-Fi and register an account with B&N. I found that the touch-screen based navigation was intuitive and easy-to-use. I had it all set up in about 20 minutes. Nothing crashed, and I felt hopeful.

O.K., so then I wanted to read something. I soon discovered that between B&N and Google Books, there are thousands, maybe millions, of free books to download. It’s easy to find a no-cost version of many books in the public domain (primarily books published prior to 1923) and it takes just a quick search and a tap on the screen for them to appear in your “library.” In minutes, I had copies of classics by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain and more.

This has remained for me the best part of the e-reader experience, and I’ve found all sorts of useful information out there. I was delighted to discover a short promotional pamphlet published by the Raleigh, N.C., Chamber of Commerce in 1894, which declared happily that the middle regions of the state were found to be “remarkably salubrious and healthful—only along some few rivers being found any degree of deleterious malarial influence.” In the authors’ enthusiasm for the region, they also compare the topography of the state to a “gracefully reclining” naked goddess.

Over the next couple of days, I explored some of the Nook’s other features. It offers free trials of many magazine titles, and I thought I’d try out GQ because I am a gentleman, or try to be occasionally. In about a minute, the Nook downloaded the current issue, concerned primarily with men’s spring fashions, to my library. At least for this particular issue, the presentation was a straightforward electronic representation of the magazine, which reproduced nicely on the full-color display. This issue didn’t have many interactive features, which I would have liked to see more of, and reading smaller text required additional magnification with the screen’s pinch-to-zoom feature. But for instantly downloading single issues of titles for research or periods of airport boredom, the Nook is a nice thing to have. (If you’re curious, all the gentleman are to said to be wearing plaid ties, colorful khakis and fluffy-looking scarves this spring.)

Next, I wanted to see what reading a newspaper would be like, so I snagged the latest issue of the Wall Street Journal for a buck. Unlike GQ, this wasn’t a direct visual representation of the issue; the Nook version of the paper is formatted for the e-reader. I could see where someone would switch from print to a dedicated e-subscription. The newspaper e-reading experience is similar to print, involving mostly text, but it sure does seem more convenient than having to fuss around with all that paper. Again, the color screen comes in handy here for photos and charts, although I had some trouble zooming in to read some of the smaller charts.

Other points worth noting:
•    The Nook Color has a web browser and makes a great device for casual browsing where you have Wi-Fi access.
•    It has a backlit screen. This is nice because it doesn’t keep my wife up at night when I want to read. I was worried about eye fatigue with the LCD screen, but haven’t noticed a problem reading for an hour or two. At least for now, however, I may stick to print for long, weighty pieces, such as Russian novels or video camera instruction manuals.
•    The Nook is based on the Android operating system, and while you can’t use the Android Market of apps for it, B&N is said to be developing its own app market to be released soon.

Care to share any comments about the Nook Color or other e-readers? I haven’t owned the Nook for long, but I’d be happy to answer any questions about my experience so far.

Central Virginia AMA Content Marketing, Social Media Speaking Event

I'm going to be speaking at the Central Virginia American Marketing Association on February 15, 2011 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at the The Doubletree, 990 Hilton Heights Road, Charlottesville, VA.

My presentation will cover the details of a social media plan- from content to going mobile. Here's the boilerplate.
 

The Central Virginia AMA and Social Media Club Charlottesville present John Cass, Head of Digital Marketing at Pace Communications

You will learn:

•Tips on designing content for mobile and tablet formats
•How to start a social media program
•All about content marketing

How Do You Avoid Building A Content Farm?

Matt Cutts of Google's webspam team recently wrote a Google blog article about content farms, and in the process provided some insight into what is a content farm.

In Matt Cutts' post he wrote:

“content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. And "sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content."

Looking around the web I see a number of websites that aggregate content but the content on those sites is of good quality.

Sometimes those sites repost duplicated content from other sites.

zdnet.com comes to mind, where nonpaid authors write columns and reproduce articles from their sites or blogs.

When I worked at Forrester Research as Online Community Manager I helped set up the feed from one or two of the Forrester blogs, where a post would be published on the Forrester blog and reposted on ZDnet. Now isn't that duplicate content, even if it's high quality?

There's Social Media Today, one of the leading sites on social media marketing, virtually all of the blog posts are duplicate copies of writer's posts on their own sites. Though writers are required to write unique posts four times a year on the site. Here you have an important community site, but most of the content is actually duplicated.

Again in Matt Cutts' post he wrote:

“content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.
sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.

Given Matt's definition, doesn't that put ZDNet and Social Media Today into the content farm category, or are there other factors at work here? Would be helpful to get answers from the community or even Google.

Defining A Content Garden

Defining a content garden:

A high quality site, edited by journalists and community managers, where there's a combination of paid journalist content, moderated free content, and aggregated content.

The emphasis is on curated content that's high quality, the quality is derived either from moderation of the content, or choosing contributors carefully for their knowledge of an industry or topic. If you will, the content gardeners plan the layout of the content garden, plant all the crops, water and weed the garden. Where a content farm is full of row crops, in a content garden there's variety and personality.

To encourage contributions from thought leaders in an industry, contributors are often termed columnists even though no payment is given by the site to the author. Instead, the site lends its credibility to the author, and in turn the author lends their credibility to the site.

Update: 1/25/11

@bethdunn Beth Dunn adds her thoughts on the definition of a content garden:

"Farmers grow crops for the market, but gardeners grow food for the table...Cultivation versus mass- production, more niche and person-focused than broad, quantity-focused."

 

When Is A Content Farm Not A Content Farm But A Garden?

Given Google's new announcement about its plan to root out content farms, is there ever a place for creating a website that aggregates content, or encourages people to submit content in return for just a commission or the honor of contributing content?

I think there is and those white hat content farms are actually gardens of content, where content gardeners, editors tend the garden to remove weeds, and curate the best content in one place or point to the best content on the web.

CMO.com aggregates content by an editor writing a unique synopsis of the article. Because of the synopsis there's no duplication of content, while columnists submit unique content. However, no unique articles from paid journalists are written, thereby reducing the costs of content creation, because it’s either free from columnists or aggregated from the web. Instead CMO.com pays an editor to curate content from the web, and encourage submissions from influential authors on marketing.

Mashable pays its journalists, but also encourages columnists’ submissions that are free, in the process, lowering costs for content acquisition, and increasing the number of links to their site from influential writers who want to promote a published article on Mashable. The site spends money on writers, but also editors and community managers who encourage participation.
ZDNet has paid content, and content from columnists that's free; some of the columnist posts are republished from original websites like Forrester Research. ZDNet gains low cost high quality content, and links from the contributors. 

The list goes on, I believe the web has changed from just a few years ago, content farms may be spam, but building a content garden like Mashable, ZDNet, or Social Media Today make sense if you want to compete.

Towards Whitehat Content Farms?

I’m more and more convinced that in today’s competitive web, it’s almost impossible for a company to develop a website with just paid or employee writers. You have to have some sort of social network, or aggregated content on your site just to compete with the volume of posts on the web. Never mind the issue of the benefits of encouraging thought leaders to write for your site, and link back to you from their own sites. While leaving content development up to employee volunteers is a disaster waiting to happen. Rather companies have to plan, edit, and administer to building sufficient quality content on their sites.

I look at about.com, Associated Content, Mashable, Social Media Today, CMO.com and more websites, all of these sites have some sort of combination of paid content, aggregated content, and free content from columnists and a social community. Not only does free content, or commission content within a social network lower the upfront costs of content on a website, but there are personal influence and seo linking benefits from encouraging thoughtful writers to write for your site.

In a post on the Google Blog about Google's continuing efforts to root out poor quality content farms, you see both a symptom of the success of building a business model where content is generated quickly and cheaply, and a path for how to avoid the Google axe. Yes, its okay to build a big site with plenty of content, but how you build that content, and its quality is what's important in today's competitive web world.

I've long been interested in how social media can be used for marketing success, and my personal research has taken me into the realm of corporate social media, my Fortune 500 business blogging post is an example of that.

Here I'm not sure what term to describe the new reality of the web. You can no longer just throw up a blog and expect to be a leader in the community, though that's possible!. To win in the content game, you have to help foster the whole community. I'm now thinking it would be a good idea to look for examples of Fortune 500 companies who are building "Quality Content Farms," or maybe "whitehat content farms."

The Cost Of Social Media: Ramping Up Your Community

Building community takes time. You have to encourage participation, and sometimes kick start the conversation by asking questions yourself or requesting help from friends willing to ask or answer questions in the community.

When I helped start the AMA Boston blog, we recruited a number of bloggers from our volunteer pool, scheduling each blogger's post. We had some results, but not exactly what we were looking for. So we decided to move the community over to a Ning social media community, where those same volunteer bloggers started to post their articles on the social media site. As more people joined the site, those new community members started to post their own articles without being asked, or even being a member of the AMA. Once we had about 40 or so active people posting articles, we no longer needed the bloggers.

The AMA case study illustrates the early costs involved in starting a community, you have to do a lot of prior planning, and set the groundwork for building a successful community. The costs in setting up a community come early. Once you've succeeded in establishing a successful community you don't have to be as active in participating. Instead, you will want to give more power to members of the community to moderate and grow the community themselves. Though it does depend upon your goals and the rules operating in your industry, if you are going to run a successful community, it's important to remember the more power you give to people to gain benefits from the community through recognition, the more active they will be.

 

Tracking The Fortune 500 Infographic

This infographic illustrating the distribution of Fortune 500 companies in the United States demonstrates clearly the dominance by geography of the Fortune 500 by certain states and the distribution on a regional basis of Fortune 500 companies.

Texas has more companies than any other state with 64 companies, but then its a big state in terms of population and land mass. While New New York comes in second, the state has population but is also at the center of the Northeast region with 26.48% of companies.

I find it fascinating that 10 states hold 2/3 of the headquarters for Fortune 500 companies, and I note that I've only lived in one of those states, California.

What's also interesting to learn from this chart are the top industries by growth and profit for Fortune 500 companies. Who would have thought pipelines heads the list for growth. Not so surprising Network and communications equipment for profit.

Statistics can be very confusing but a well designed infographic clearly gets to the heart of what data means to the reader.

Here are a few more infographics I've been involved in designing while working at Pace. Shopping and grocery story social media marketing, and magazines on digital publishing platforms.

The PR Of Data

Recently,  Linkedin sent me an email informing me that over 200 of my contacts had changed or accepted new jobs in 2010.

What a brilliant use of existing data to tell a story about the power of a company's services. The email reminds me of Salary.com's famous Mother's Day campaign, where Salary.com estimated the true salary of a parent.  Both Linkedin's campaign and Salary.com are examples of using existing data to tell a good story about the value of the services each company provides.

Look through the data you collect on your customers, and find ways to use that data to tell stories that are compelling.