4 Awesome Posts/Links You Probably Missed

I have been a bit busy playing football for a week and then being best man at my mate’s wedding. So, time for a bit of a lazy post. Lazy for me anyway but for you its awesome! Here is a collection of awesome links/posts that you probably missed over the last week or so. You can thank me by standing up at your desk and clapping loudly.

Buyer Personas: Where (and How!) to Start

Aligning your content to your target audience is essential. But how do you know who your audience is and what makes them tick. Buying persona’s help solidify, in your mind, your audience and are particularly useful if you ask a guest blogger or other staff members to produce content. In this post, Jeremy Victor, answers the questions that are most likely top of mind for you when it comes to buyer personas. Check it out >>

3 Marketing Lessons From Drug Dealers

In this post Mike Volpe recounts a presentation he attended from John Moore of Brand Autopsy. John’s talk was an analogy that drew heavily on two ‘drug’ denizens – Frank Lucas, the purveyor of ‘Blue Magic’ heroin in the 70s as depicted in the movie American Gangster, and Starbucks, our own nation’s top retailer of caffeinated energy in a cup. Though only one of these substances is illegal, both organizations used product and marketing to develop a uniquely loyal following. Great stuff! Check it out >>

5 Totally Awesome Social Media Infographics

Gary Thomas provides some stats and interesting tidbits on just how many people are using the internet to share, research, and network with one another. Check it out >>

Relevance is Not an Option

Ardath Albee outlines what happens when people don’t find your companies messages relevant. She goes on to outline that part of what causes messages to become irrelevant is that companies make assumptions about what customers want via a relationship on social media. A new study by IBM found that the perception gap is likely wider than you think. This is deffintley one of my favourite graphics … ever. Very powerful. Pull your head out of the sand! Check it out >>

 

What Is The Future Of Your Product?

Today I was sent a video – “A Day Made of Glass... Made possible by Corning”. Super cool.

Personally I love these ads that take a current brand or the product it produces and shows what the company envisages it will be in the future. Some may argue that they aren’t ads because they aren’t really selling anything. Maybe they are more promotional videos? Semantics I suppose but for me they are ads that are working in a brand sense.

So many companies spend their marketing budget on the here and now trying to change behaviour or elicit a response (someone buying something). For me, companies that project themselves into the future are subtly saying “hey, we’re gonna be here for a long time”. It creates buzz that these companies are working on bigger and better things and not just shifting current product.

Done correctly, the video can go viral. In fact, I tweeted a link to the glass video and got an @mention from Trending Tube (@TTube_) that the video it was #38 on the most viewed videos for the day. In fact, the video has had just under 9 million views in a month! I bet not too many of those 9 million had heard of Corning before. They have now.

The Corning video and the idea of sharing your vision borrows loosely from a common sales technique called “projecting”. I used to use it all the time when I was selling gym memberships back in the day of my European adventures (HT Trent Jakubowski). Instead of simply saying “here is a spa that is open until 10pm” I would instead project the potential member to a time when they would use the spa e.g. “When you finish you workout on a Thursday evening you can sit and enjoy this spa up until 10pm”. Real Estate agents also use it when they suggest you de-clutter your house before selling it so that people can "imagine” (project) themselves to a time when they would live there and how it would look with their stuff in it.

I know we don’t all have big budgets to spend on these types of ads/videos. But companies should still consider how they can produce compelling content that gets people excited about the companies vision of the future and what its products would be like. Consider a round table podcast discussing products in 20 years time. Ask customers what they would like to see. Write a blog post. PROJECT!

          

3 Awesome Posts You Probably Missed

I am going to start following the lead from a few other bloggers and start sharing some of the better pieces of content I come across each week. It won’t be in lieu of something more thought provoking or analytical, which I will try and still do each week, but gives me a chance to pump something quick and useful out to you each week regardless.

How to Optimize your Company’s LinkedIn Profile

Are you aware of the recent changes that LinkedIn has made to enhance the Company Profile part of it’s site? There is some pretty cool stuff in there where you can now add video, picture carousels and add specific product/service pages. Adam Kleinberg has a nice post on it however a fair few of us were confused when we tried to have a play on our company profiles. In response, Adam has posted a helpful follow-up blog LinkedIn Companies Questions. Check it out >>

 

Five Point Social Media Idea Checklist

My man Julian Cole provides a few questions to ask yourself before going ahead with that Digital/Social idea. Very handy in keeping you on the straight and narrow. Check it out >>

 

Passionate About Your Product: What Brands Can Learn From Unofficial Bloggers

Leigh Duncan-Durst over at Marketing Profs catches up with Melody Overton, who writes a popular unofficial Starbucks blog. It is pretty interesting to get inside the head of a brand fan and even find out more about how Starbucks handles/manages her activity. Check it out >>