The Bulls Roar » Marketing

Some things you just can’t fake!

Samyo Dalgarno — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:22:11 +0000

Woohoo!!!

Well Annie has gone & got herself productive on other things and she has given me back the keys to the ute (“the pick-up”, if you’re one of our American friends)

So I am left wondering where to go for my first drive. I could go downtown on some practical internet marketing mission or I could wander off into the scenic wilderness of cyberspace, on a Quest to discover something deep, meaningful and ultimately useful.

I like Quest’s …

So where to begin.

There is a lot of talk about authentic marketing, I know, we started it more than 3 years ago, but what does it really mean to be authentic?

To give you a background, I left the mainstream world in 1999 off on a personal quest to discover the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything. During that journey I came to understand and experience a lot of things about energy and about how we create and un-create our lives.

Everything is energy, this is a scientific fact. Deeper into that, like people and places, businesses also have an energy you might call it a vibe or a feeling. That vibe or feeling we get about a business is its most important asset and comes from several places.

Like a child, a business will have had an inspiration a first moment of conception, a seed or kernel that will contain the idea or possibility that is a business. Did that inspiration come from a desire to be of service, a desire to create a better widget, a desire just to make money or maybe a genuine place of interest or enthusiasm?

This is the first & most important question to ask yourself. What is the root of the tree that is your business?

Next it will be influenced by the people involved, the core group of players that are nurturing the tree to life and growth. Then the people you bring in to work with you, either as partners, employees, web designers or external contractors. The imagery the logo’s the furniture the building, and on and on .. (You get the picture).

Each and every piece of your business comes together to create an energy or entity that is a business, and your business is a reflection of the core, the inspiration, the conscious and the unconscious. That energy or vibe, we all feel to varying degrees, wether we know it consciously or not, it is this energy that will mean success or failure.

Sadly what I have seen in the last 30 years in the area of marketing & modern business is that the root or the core energy of a business gets lost or forgotten in the rush for profits or expansion. That is why we are now seeing major players in trouble and issues like the Global Financial Crisis.

What’s worse is that in recent times, major and minor marketing companies are jumping on the back of the shift in awareness and hijacking it in the rush for a new idea or an “Edge”. What happens is that some people take on the concept of “Authentic Marketing” but they do it with their head, so it is not real, they see it as a tool or a clever marketing trick.

I can tell you that you cannot fake authenticity, it does not work like that, authenticity does not come from your head and it is not just an idea, it is soooo much deeper than that.

I often hear business people scoff at many “New Thought” ideas and concepts, but let me assure you if you do it properly and in integrity with yourself (as a business leader) it works.

My current poster child for this is my good friend Tony Oliver of www.sacredskin.com.au . Tony currently runs two very successful Tattoo Studios and has online business selling Swashdrive tattoo machines www.qualitytattoomachines.com , he has become so successful, that he has to open a 3^rd studio. Tony has done this in a downturned market in an industry that most people might consider a luxury item.

His website traffic is growing daily, his statistics are enough to make any web developer or online entrepreneur shine with pride. (that’s why I am telling you his story)

How as he done it?

He has done it by ensuring every step is in alignment with his core values and his vision for his business and his life, and I don’t mean ideas in his head.

Authenticity is not a mental idea, it is not a concept or clever tool it is a genuine place of really understanding yourself and what motivates you at the deepest levels.

You cannot “do” authentic you have to “be” authentic, even when it is not comfortable.

To get there you have to peel away the layers of inner noise, the should’s and should nots, to discover that which genuinely sets you apart from the herd. Then you have to have the courage and the willingness to expose that aspect of yourself, take the steps and follow that energy for all it is worth.

How do you do that? ….. well that’s another post.

Stay Shiny
Samyo

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Post tags: Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing plan, mission, Social Media, vision, Website

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The ‘Why You Should’ Enter and Host of Blogging Contests

AnnieInfinite — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:41:36 +0000

: Image by Kristina B via Flickr

Have you ever wondered why blogs hold Blogging Contests?

One of the best reasons is that they can result in amazing Win/Win for both the host blog and the entrant bloggers in so many important ways!!

Both blogs/sites will as a result of hosting and entering the contest boost traffic, readership, and backlinks to their websites and create more excitement and promotion opportunties through the generated extra marketing involved. Add to this that winning the Guest Blogging Contest means that you will have the opportunity to guest blog with links and full attribution back to you and your blog every time you guest post!

Here’s a list of the main reasons for entering blogging contests and winning of course:

Increase in traffic to both blogs
Increase in comments on both blogs
Increase in subscribers in both blogs
Huge increase in backlinks to both blogs
Shared more often
Excitement generated
More mentions and followers on social media

Now that has to be worth the time it takes to enter and create a really great post, link it to the host blog and promote the contest and your entry with gusto for a couple of weeks. The result could be a sky-rocketing of your blog stats and your brand awareness right throughout social media and the blog-a-sphere!

They do mean more work for the host who will have to check their blog and social media stream daily so that they can respond to all the new backlinks, hashtags, comments and mentions and usually every backlink coming from an entry post is reciprocated via the host blog in another post on their blog so it is a lot of work. The results can be amazing and the work well worth every minute for all the reasons described above.

Blog contests can be found all over the web and some are held regularly, however I love to find the new and once-in-a-while bloggin contests as I have a much bigger chanced of winning it. The latest blogging contest I am entering is the Culgoa Point Resort – Guest Blogging Contest and it is so easy to enter:

just post an appropriate post on a range of subjects based around Noosa Heads where the resort is based or about the competition itself and link to the blog or the post about the contest in your post which is exactly what I am doing here.

So if you’re ready to make a huge difference to your marketing for your blog today, why not head on over by clicking on the link above, read the rules and how to enter and enter yourself? Too easy!!

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Backlink, Blog, blogging contest, Business, Marketing, Social Media, Win-win game

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Do You Have a Plan?

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:21:50 +0000

: Image by Linda Nowakowski via Flickr

Well do you?

By this I mean a plan for your business? a plan for your website? a plan for your marketing? for your social media?

Planning means you get to take in both the big picture and the smaller steps it takes to achieve those long term goals, it also allows you to track your success!

Creating a plan for a business means knowing where your going by creating your vision and mission statements, have you done yours? Your vision and mission statements don't have to be on display to anyone, however they servce as a reminder to you about why you are in business, and as a road map to where your business is going.

A website plan is so important, we so often have people who come to us with no plan at all, we love to know your branding colours, taglines and branding statements – you do have branding don't you? Your vision also helps us to create the design that reflects your vision and passion out into the world. Know what you like not necessarily what you want, as your website designer can often come up with something far more amazing than you could dream yourself. However some very important things you must know about your website and structure into your plans are what you want your website to do!

Your marketing plan can include all your marketing, your branding statements and colours, your taglines, your marketing statements and words to use when marketing and it can include your where's as well. Where are you going to market? Where can you get the most bang or BUZZ for your buck? This takes research.

Your social marketing plan can be included within your larger marketing plan, however it also need to have planning in and of itself. Which social sites and types of site you will use, why you are going to use those, how often and how much time you will spend. Will you have a social marketing manager? Will you do it yourself? Where you will get the training you need to use social media efficiently.

Planning must of course include targets, goals and accountability. How else will you know whether you are on course and whether you are being sucessfull?

Make some plan and put them down on paper, draw up a mindmap of how all these plan fit together and help make you successful, then put the mindmap and your vison and mision statements up where you can see them every day.

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Post tags: Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing plan, mission, Social Media, vision, Website

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How to Create Your Own Page on Facebook

AnnieInfinite — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:51:54 +0000

I have recieved a few requests for an easy step-by-step guide to creating your page on Facebook, this is a very easy process although there are a few extra tips that can come in very handy when creating a page to help maximise your leverage, your conversations and your exposure that can make a real difference to the success of your page.

So here goes:

First of all the easiest way to “Create your own page” is to go to another person’s page and scroll down to the bottom of the left hand side of the page and look for the link – as shown here
You will be taken to a new page where you can fill in the form with the name and type of your reason for creating a page. Here you have some very important choices to make as the information you choose here is written in stone! So let’s go through your choices:
* Choose your business typ - either a Local Business or if it is a Product or Service or if it is time to brand you as well Public Figure. Here you can also decide if you are more of a community or group based around a certain subject or meetup.
* Choose the name of your page – Here use your Business name, the name of your product or service or of course your own name if you are branding yourself. EXPERT HINT: add two descriptors or keywords of your brand here so that people and search engines know what this page is about. This is expecially important if your business or product name is not clear about what it is. e.g. Our business “The Zen Bull” does not prolaim itself as a website and online marketing company so our descriptors on our FB Page name are “Website Creation and Marketing”.
Once you have made these very important decisions click on ‘Create Official Page’ and Bingo! you have your very own page!
The next page you will see is the very new ‘Getting Started’ page with lots for you to do: Here you will put in the profile image for your page EXPERT HINT: don’t waste this very important real estate – make sure you have a profile image that displays your business or product to maximum effect. See previous post here Ins and Outs of Facebook Pages for more information on enhancing your Page
When filling out your Page information please make good use of all the spaces provided -if you cannot see a box that describes exactly what you need use anything available, as in the case of a Local Business page there is a box provided for describing Transportation and Parking – instead use this to describe your business or product and what you do, and what you solve and your passion for your business.
Once you have filled out as much as you want or need to on this list it is time to see your behind the scenes ‘Edit Page’ dashboard and set up your settings for maximum effect on your page.
Go to ‘Edit Page’ underneath your profile image and click this will bring you to a long page with lots of settings on it. For beginners the main setting to change is the Wall Settings – click on it and this will open to a smaller area where you can change these settings your choices are “Only Posts by Page” or “All Posts” choose all posts for enabling the maximum conversations on your page. This is very important to go from being an advertising page to a conversational, relationship marketing page.Yes you may have to delete the occasional annoying post, this is far better than being an advertising page after all Facebook is a social platform.
You may want to add more applications to your page as encouraged in my other posts on Facebook:
Why Does My Business Need a Facebook Page?
Facebook for Business Are You Missing Out?
to do this scroll down to the bottom of your ‘Edit Page’ dashboard and click on ‘Add more’ – easy!
Oh! and don’t forget to ‘Like’ your own page Be your own first ‘Liker’ this creates your very first FB ‘vote’ for your page and your stats will begin to go up immediately and with every ‘Liker’ and link.
Another great post can be found here: How to create a facebook fan page

The Zen Bull Websites and Marketing

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brand, Business, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Marketing, Social Networking, Zen Bull

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Why Does My Business Need A Facebook Page?

AnnieInfinite — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:07:18 +0000

: Image by luc legay via Flickr

Just this week I had a little idea and put it into action immediately, I created a Facebook Page to help my clients and other locals Buzz Up their businesses on Facebook and Twitter.

Now what has come out of this for me was the astonishing number of people who have created a personal profile in their business name!

When I did ask a few of them why, I recieved a number of answers including:

“I didn’t know how to make a page”
“I wanted to be able to comment as my page”
“It was just easier”
“What’s the difference?”

This post is for you! All of you who do now know how much you can get out of having a page on Facebook, most especially if you have a website!

Facebook ‘Like’ Pages or Fan Pages as they used to be called are Facebooks answer to business profiles and they are created to represent a business, an identity or brand. In fact they are the perfect answer to doing business on Facebook, as there are a number of hidden perks for your business and your website in having a Page.

Pages are indexed by search engines, yes your Facebook comments, links and posts will show up in the search engines as being a representative of your brand, business and website and also serve as high quality back links to your site.
You can have mutiple Pages, all linked by Favoriting each other and this creates a web of indexible links back to your site.
You can have unlimited fans for a Page, but only 5,000 friends.
The box provided under your profile image can be filled with keywords which will also be indexed by the search engines and this includes your site URL
The “Like’ factor is like a vote for your page, the more ‘Like’s’ the more votes, and the higher ranked your Page and your own website which is linked to your fan page will be. This is great SEO for your page and your site!
When other pages Favorite your page, this is like another vote for your page and your ranking goes up even further and a pic of your Page shows up on their Page under the term Favorite Pages!
You can get away with a lot more marketing from a Page than you can from a profile, in face Facebook can and does ban you if you’re are caught using a personal Profile for marketing, too often.
You are allowed to message all fans at once, whereas on a personal profile you are allowed at most 20 people at once, and if you message the same message more than twice in batches your account can be suspended.
You can create a Welcome Tab for your Page which can look just a like a mini version of your website, and can gather readers for your blog, or Optins for your material.
It looks much more professional for your business than a using a personal profile, and it looks like you know what you are doing!
You can send every post on your Page directly to Twitter automatically
There are loads of great apps created just for pages!

You cannot get any of this from a personal profile and if you tried you might find Facebook Admin breathing down your neck!

If you have a business on Facebook, please do yourself and your business a favour and get yourself a Page!

The Zen Bull

Websites and Marketing

More Meat, less potatoes!

Creating and Optimizing a Facebook Fan Page for Your Business (slideshare.net)
Dummies Guide to Creating Facebook Pages (labnol.org)
3 Reasons Facebook Trumps Twitter for Business (socialmediaexaminer.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Facebook, Facebook Page, Marketing, Twitter, Web search engine, Website

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Corporate Social Media Must Haves!

AnnieInfinite — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:21:43 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

After a conversation with one of my best clients yesterday, I was shocked to hear that some businesses and corporations still seem to think that social media is just a passing fad. Social Media is in fact taking the world by storm and proof of this is that some of the biggest corporations are not only taking it on they are excelling at it! Look at big brands like Coca Cola, Burger King, Ford, Dell and of course the meteoric success of Starbucks all using social media well.

There are of course some brands who are missing the mark big time and the reasons for this are many, with the main reason being that they are using an old mindset to use new tools.

Old mindsets that miss the mark are:

Social Media is just a passing trend: not with the numbers on social media steadily rising every day and more social media sites popping up weekly.
Social media is too time consuming: a social media strategy needs only to set one or two times a day to be on social media and choosing the right sites on which to put your profiles is a part of the strategy.
Social Media is viewed as just another advertising channel: social media is anything but this, in fact we must look at it in an entirely new light. Social Media for corporations needs to be put in its own more autonomous category altogether as part of a larger marketing strategy.
They think that it isn’t worth setting up a central strategy: Social Media is about having a global strategy and global audience, but this must be both created and monitored by the international head office of the corporation.
They aren’t trying to build communities: using your social media profiles as just another place to advertise, sending out link after link or sales pitch after sales pitch with no conversation is not what social media is about at all.
They don’t see the long term view: social media is exponetial and can grow very quickly, BUT it can take little while to generate the trust and respect needed to allow fans to connect with a big brand and this takes time!
They can’t track it properly so they don’t trust it: the metrics are there, but as old mindset marketers everywhere bewail – none of it is entirely definitive – this is people and trend driven and unless big brands are keeping up they will go down.

What Corporations who miss the mark are missing:

Social Media is SOCIAL: it’s about building relationships based on trust and respect for the person handling the profiles, this means one very important thing – you MUST have trust and respect for the person you have handling those profiles. Do they post in ways that authentically represent the brand? Do they have the integrity and sense of enthusiasm necessary to show passion for the brand? Are they incentivise to create a worldwide audience? Starbucks could not have done what they did with social media if they hadn’t had someone handling their social media who filled this criteria, who is handling your social media strategy?

If this was farmed out to young Sally because she understands Facebook and Twitter, you may want to rethink this. Social Media is a profession and it needs a professional to handle branding and dissemination of your marketing messages and brand awareness, if this is not possible it needs to be someone who is passionate about the brand and has the best interests of it at heart. Social media is fast becoming the ‘voice’ of the world, you not only need to know what they’re saying about you, you need to be listening and responding. Because it is the ‘voice of the world’ who is going to be deciding if your corporation makes it or not, yes social media is just that powerful. If you doubt this just take a look at what is happening with BP right now, or what happened with Nestle, Pampers and of course the makers of Mortrin.

Social Media Requires Transparancy: now this is a big one for many large corporations, the idea that the marketing message is going to be in the hands of ‘the people’, and worse that they may recieve negative comments on their social media profiles where everyone can see them. Here’s a hard fact – both of these things are happening anyway and with no listening ear or social media presence what can you do about it? Nothing! The lessons from Domino’s and other brand who were caught out on social media are profound, when you can hear and converse with your market, when you are in a relationship with them you can create enormous good will and word of mouth by admitting you were wrong and finding a way to settle any disagreements with style and flair!

Not only this, but this kind of transparency also helps to create brand advocates and even evangelists who see your brand as trustworthy, just because your brand was there on the spot admitting you were wrong and settling the dispute online right in front of the world. You can gain such amazing charisma from these small acts of kindness, proving that your brand is still listening to the little guy. This is your opportunity to take the BIG out of BIg brand and bring a warm and fuzzy feeling to your customers that will translate into bottom line win/win for all.

Social Media Means Sharing: Yes, we’re back talking about ‘warm and fuzzy’ things again. Sharing means listening, communicating and collaboration with your customers, which also means you will be right at the coal face and able to ask your customers what they want from your brand. Talk about the simplest way to ‘test’ the market, think of the opportunities to raise your brands worldwide profile! Starbucks have this down pat, asking their audience to ‘design’ the next coffee or the Technorati asking their audience to help them design their new logo. This kind of sharing means trust is a two way street and this builds even more trust, this kind of mutual trust and admiration can only translate in higher profits.

Social Media is About Being Authentic: Now this comes back to a point I made earlier in this post about who you trust to handle your social media branded profiles. Because social media requires an authentic mindset from everyone and I mean everyone, corporations need to have someone who understand who your brand is, what the brands vision and mission is. What personality your brand has, because your brand needs to be HUMAN! People want to do business with people, social media is to blame for this as it makes every brand more accessable. This is key! Only humans can be authentic, corporations cannot, the human you have as your voice on social media needs to be authentic and authentically representing your brand.

Social Media Requires Consistency: There is no set and forget in social media, someone needs to be online daily or at least very regularly, in fact the bigger your corporation the more often you will need to be there. This will mean you must have a strategy, a team of people who know what they’re doing and scheduling, goals and outcomes in place. Social media is constantly changing and growing and you will need someone in charge who is on top of what’s happening and what’s trending and what to do next. Someone who understands that social media is all about trickle feeding your social media profiles consistently, answering questions and complaints daily, praising and rewarding your brand advocates and evangelists and coming up with innovative and creative ways to engage your online audience.

Social Media for Corporations needs to be set up by someone who understands your brand and how best to use the different social media platforms for maximum effect, which ones will work for you and how to create initial and continuous engagement for your corporation. Corporations need to start now, social media is not a trend that will die out, in fact it is a steadily growing trend that sees no end to its exponential growth, look at Facebook now topping 500 Million users by mid-July – the world has found its voice and it is has no intention of losing it again.

Get ready for a whole new world or get left behind.

http://statistics.allfacebook.com/pages
http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

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What Facebook’s new ‘Likes’ and ‘Interests’ Means for Marketers

AnnieInfinite — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:50:31 +0000

Unless your head is stuck in the sand you will have noticed that Facebook no longers allows you to ‘Fan’ a Page, but rather to ‘Like’ a page and while most people are trying to get their head around this new change and figure out what it means I can tell you one thing, it means that marketers are applauding.

Why, I hear you ask?

First of all go take another look at the ‘Info’ tab on your profile, if you’re like many FBer’s you hardly ever look at your own ‘Info’ tab, you will see that now all the information you filled out on that page concerning your interests both business and personal have been attached to new pages with their own Thumbnails, some of these thumbnails have no real pages – yet.

What this means for marketers is that you can now target your marketing according to all this new information which is being indexed and geo – tagged via Google!

Let me run that by you again – everything that you fill out on your Info tab is now not only indexable and targetable it is being used by Facebook to do just that! That’s why we do not ‘Fan’ pages any more, this is why we now like Pages – because we can now target those ‘likes and interests’ and market directly to the people who have clicked on them.

No longer are fans only targetable by their own pages, they are targetable via their own profiles and the ‘likes and interests’ that are catalogued on their profiles as well. Now every time you click you ‘LIKE’ something: e.g. a movie, book, music, a news story or an FB Page – this data is added to the general social search engine that is Facebook and this updates your permanent Facebook profile at the same time.

Now I want to make it clear Facebook does not expose your data to everyone – only to those people you’ve have given permission to as a friend will actually see your profile as always, but the collated data us now being used by Facebook Advertising to target marketing more specifically to those who have shown an interest via the ‘likes and interests’ including FB Pages on their profile.

This makes FaceBook Advertising rival Google and perhaps be even more influencial, FB are not relying on keywords but rather YOUR likes and interests, now that’s a step forward in the evolution of online marketing!!

For more information check out this Mashable post: http://mashable.com/2010/04/19/facebook-pages

and this one is a video from Mark Zuckerberg himself on Facebook Changes to expect: http://mashable.com/2010/04/21/zuckerberg-video/

Facebook’s New Ad Targeting Knows What You Read (hubspot.com)
Facebook Ads Will Use Your Web History (mashable.com)
What might Facebook’s new Link to Profiles and Pages mean for Bloggers? (socialmediatoday.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Facebook, Google, Marketing, Social network, Target market

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Do You Know These Social Media Personalities?

AnnieInfinite — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:40:29 +0000

When you play and work on Social Media for as long as I have, you realise that there are some social media types you come across regularly, now I could just tell you what to look for, but I thought I would have some fun with this and give you a little more insight at the same time by using dogs as my reference

So sit back and enjoy this post and gain some inights into the characteristics of some of the most prolific social media personality types:

The Puppy - the total newbie to social media, this personality type makes mistakes however they are endearing and learn from watching other more experienced personalities. When you meet a newbie it is a good idea to be a little patient with them until they learn the etiquette, when they make a mistake because they have been watching and modelling their comments on the ‘wrong’ type, guidance is the best option until they learn the ropes.
The Chihuahua - This personality type yaps often and yet seems to say very little, there is no substance, rhyme or reason for their tweets and posts they can be seen typing things like: “sitting watching tv and chillin’ with ma bro” or the classic “gotta go pee” Yapping all day long about nothing in particular trying to get noticed.
The Miniature Poodle - These posts can be classified as sickly sweet, this SM personality like quotes and fires them off one after the other in quick succession and has little or nothing to say at all other than “I just love my life” etc.. , again no real substance or conversation. This is the cream puff of the social media world again nothing of real substance however occasionally they post a quote worth reposting or retweeting.
The Doberman – now this SM personality is all business and no nonsence, they are there to advertise their product, service and brand and do not bother with any real world conversation. Their posts are characterised by no-nonsence marketing which is often sent out via autobot so they don’t have to bother replying or conversing at all. The all business character of the SM universe and often blocked by me even though I too market online.
The Mongrel – it is interesting what types are attracted to social media and this type loves to bad mouth others, cause trouble and gossip, they will find any user and treat them to a post denegrating their personality, looks, and posts in a rude and uncouth manner and are best blocked at your earliest conventience for good. Obviously have no other way to gain the fame they seek and have a bad attitude.
The Basset Hound - this type tells you every little thing about their lives, they are often looking for sympathy and they post pathetic comments and tweets hoping that you will be reeled into their lives in a way that you will feel you need to help them in some way. This creates the very attention that they crave. They love playing the victim and often ask for help in ways that are downright rude “I am so low at the moment the only way I feel better is when I write my story, I cannot type and so really need someone to buy me a voice recorder – this is the one I want LINK” (a real post I saw on my Facebook wall recently)
The German Shepherd - now this personality is worth knowing, although they are there for business they also understand the need to converse and be social on social media, they will openly edify other businesses and people and are up for a cross marketing opportunity or two. They often post items of interest from all over the web and are generally business-like and social at the same time.
The Golden Retreiver – This social media personality truly gets social media, they create relationships and friendships at the same time as cultivating their business and marketing relationships. They will openly post about their life while not becoming completely boring and are great at cross marketing with those they are ‘friends’ with, even their direct competition, understanding that competition is only an untapped market. Look for the Golden Retrievers they are focussed on creating great relationships and helping you to become successful as they understand that reciprocity is a key component of social media.

Have you got any Social Media personality types you would like to add to this list? Leave me a comment and tell me about them..

The Zen Bull

DISCLAIMER – I love dogs and at no time am I saying that any of the dog types mentioned in this post are unloveable or not worth having, this is just meant to be a bit of fun. At no time were any dogs harmed during the creation of this post.

8 Stages of Social Media Psychosis (philbaumann.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Facebook, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Social Media, Twitter

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Gary’s Social Media Counter Proof that SM is Huge!

AnnieInfinite — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:43:38 +0000

This is cool! If you do not believe that social media is changing the way we do business this very cool Social Media Counter will prove it to you. Just watch the numbers roll!!!!!!

Thanks to Gary from Personalize Media

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Branding, Business, Marketing, Social Media

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Are You a Purple Cow or a Plain Brown One?

AnnieInfinite — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:03:17 +0000

: Cover via Amazon

One of the most influencial marketers for me I have to say is Seth Godin, his approach to marketing is no-nonsense while still being quirky and that so totally appeals to me. His book “Purple Cow” if you haven’t already heard of it is a book I can highly recommend, and it certainly gave me insights into marketing I never got out of a text book.

This one book I credit with changing my whole philosophy of marketing and I believe listening to Seth Godin via his concise yet remarkable blog posts a must for anyone in the marketing industry no matter how big or small your organisation is.

Here’s an exceprt from his book, “Purple Cow’ and what it means to be the purple cow in your industry or niche:

“You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
What do Starbucks, JetBlue, Krispy Kreme, Apple, Dutch Boy and Hard Candy have that you don’t? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last?

Face it, the checklist of tired ‘P’s marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed – Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few-aren’t working anymore. There’s an exceptionally important ‘P’ that has to be added to the list. It’s Purple Cow.

Cows, after you’ve seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though…now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won’t forget a Purple Cow. And it’s not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It’s built right in, or it’s not there. Period.”

Godin writes that you should review all your P’s (product, price, promotion, positioning, etc.) and figure out where your edges (advantages) are and where the competition is located and go where they’re not. Godin uses Jet Blue as an example of getting over the edge of service and pricing. This airline company delivers what none of the competitors possess and manages to make a profit doing it.

Marketers are farmers on the “purple cow farm.” In order to create a cow, a marketer must be involved in the entire process. Godin writes that marketing is the “act of reinventing the product, the effort of designing it, the craft of producing it, the art of pricing it, and the technique of selling it.”

The whole theory of being a purple cow is summed up in this phrase, “the act of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. . . . If what you’re offering isn’t remarkable, it’s invisible.”

Now ask yourself, what’s remarkable about your business? What’s remarkable about you? Those are the things to build on, not fitting in, not making everyone else comfortable with who you are or what you represent – be bold, stand out!

Don’t be a brown cow – get purple-ised!

Now tell me how you’re going to do that in a comment on this post – I would love to hear your purple cow story

The Zen Bull

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Marketing, Online Marketing, Purple Cow, Seth Godin

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