I think that JibJab and Juicy Fruit should definitely team up: http://bit.ly/A8fuE
If you haven’t visited the JibJab site, you should definitely go have a look. A brilliant concept, well executed, with great revenue potential.
This is what smart marketing should look like. When Office Max teamed up with JibJab for the highly viral Christmas campaign “Go Elf Yourself” it received over 100 million unique visits over the holidays.
Just read an interesting post by Ricky Irvine on Advertising, Value, and Meaning. I think he’s spot on, here’s an excerpt:
There’s what we can call the Walmart Way, in which value means less expensive, affordable, cheap, or low quality. The driving force determining what we’re willing to trade real money for is a rarely possible combination of best quality and lowest price. This is shameful.
Go and check out his blog: Dressed in Value.
I’ve had several people ask me: “How on earth do I use this Twitter thing?” or the even more popular: “I signed up for Twitter but I don’t get it, it seems dumb.” As someone who enjoys using Twitter, and finds it useful, I’m willing to guide you through the app. But first you have to promise me that you’re going to it a “good try.” Twitter is one of those apps that gets richer the more you use it and understand it. It’s not going to take a lot of time, but you really need to engage with it in order to “get it.”
Before you do anything you’ll need to create an account at twitter.com. This involves choosing a username. Here’s my advice: keep it short; I would say 8 characters or less if you can. The reason will become more apparent later, but generally you need to know that people are going to be including your username in their tweets, and they only have 140 characters total to work with.
You will also want to upload a profile picture and write out a short bio for yourself. Again, your experience will probably be a lot “richer” if you write a bio that succinctly interesting things about you: your work, your interests, etc…
After this you should start “following” a few other Twitter users. If you don’t know anyone, you can start with me: http://twitter.com/mijustin. Generally, you follow people by visiting their profile (ie. http://twitter.com/username) and clicking the “follow” button. Anyone you follow will now appear on your Twitter’s “stream” or “timeline” (the ongoing list of other people’s tweets that you see on your Twitter home page).
When you click “follow” on someone’s profile they’ll be alerted that you’re now following them, and they’ll have a chance to “follow” you back. Anyone following you will now see your updates, anytime you post a new tweet.
Here’s one of the funny quirks about Twitter: the interface prompts you with the question: “What are you doing?” but most users don’t answer that question (at least not all the time). Yes, that’s part of it, but you need to understand that Twitter is like a giant conversation. People use it to share interesting links, ask questions, search for topics, broadcast news, and have two way conversations. The point where you’ll really “get” Twitter is when you start doing those things.
Replies: to reply to someone you can type in the “@” symbol and their username (ie. “@mijustin Thanks for that link; I’ll check it out right now“). You can also click the “reply” link on a particular user’s tweet.
Re-tweet: quoting people on Twitter is encouraged. If you want to take someone else’s tweet, and re-broadcast it to your followers, you simply type in “RT” and then “@” and the username (ie. “RT @mijustin These are interesting economic times; AIG lost nearly $400K a minute“)
Direct messages: if you want to send someone who is following you a private message use the letter “D” at the beginning of the tweet, and just type in their username (without the @ symbol): “D mijustin Did you get a haircut today, because you are looking goooood!“
While it’s not listed on the Twitter home page “search.twitter.com” is a really important component to the overall experience. It allows you to search through all the different conversations on Twitter. Let’s say you’re interested in web apps. You could search for “web apps” but you can also search for items that have been “hash tagged,” for example “#webapps”
Using hashtags will also be important to your overall experience. Here are some examples of tweets using hashtags:
Remember instant messaging? At first it seemed like a ridiculous concept: regular people typing out their conversations, using a strange dialect of emoticons and acronyms. There was a bit of learning curve. But after a couple of years, people started using it. A lot. And not just nerds – even normal people started using IM.
It’s the same thing with Twitter. It’s a great tool; but you’ll need to use it regularly to fully understand it.
Leave a response to this post and tell me: What is the best ad you’ve seen this year that actually lead you to buy something?
I’m not looking for the “coolest,” or the “sexiest,” or the “funniest.” I’m interested in conversion – which ad made you pick up your wallet, and dole out some dough for the advertised item?
The answer? Go get ‘em. There are two targets for the “go get ‘em” approach: the first is based on your search results, and the second is relationship based.
Your search based audience is going to come from having good content on your website, and doing some sort of search engine optimization. You might also want to do the standard drumroll of submitting to digg, delicious, and any other relevant online list.
However, for me, I’m much more interested in the relational side of building in audience. It’s the hustle: going out, and relationally sharing who you are and what you do. This can be both online and offline.
Your first step is to tell the people you already know. Send them a personal email, a Facebook invite, or take them out for coffee. People will often say: “that group is too small, and there are thousands of people on the internet that could find me.” True, but how committed is that group of people who randomly find you on Google? You have 2.5 seconds to impress them, and they’re gone.
Focusing first on the people you know has two major advantages: they’ll give you more time and they’ll be your best promoters. Sure, it might be small fry, but they’ll be engaged.
How did I hear about Twitter? I’d received a few invites, but I ignored them (after all, I was already on Facebook, why did I need another network?). If I’d searched “social network” it would have come up on Google. But what made me sign-up was conversations with my friends that were using it and enjoying it. I’m willing to bet that for most of the “non-techy” users on Twitter, the story is the same.
Another more “small scale” idea for the relational approach is throwing a launch party. Set a date, rent out a coffee house, invite your friends and tell them to invite their friends. Have an online RSVP where you capture their name and email. Send them a confirmation notice that explains a bit of who you are, and that you’re looking forward to meeting them at the party. On the day of the event, work the crowd. Meet every person there. Remember their names. Answer questions. Pose for pictures. Make it an event that they’ll talk about, or share on Facebook the next day.
The other benefit of a launch party? Content. You’ll have pictures and salacious details to post to your site the next day. People like to be invited to the party – even if it’s the after-party on Twitter the next day.
What do you think? What are other ways you’ve built your audience?
I pass this billboard on my way to the bus stop (here’s the actual sign). When I first saw it I thought it was quite clever: each ad has a simple catch-phrase (“the original voicemail,” or “friend request accepted.”) These Dentyne ads highlight the current social media phenomenon, and point out the superiority of actual face-to-face time.
I get it. The message is clear, and the ads are simple. But do they make you want to buy Dentyne?
A big part of my methodology is making communication simple and clear. These ads have both those traits, but I’m wondering if they are actually effective in getting people to purchase the product.
Do you think they’re effective? What could they do to actually increase sales?
A friend of mine recently told me about a series of meetings he’d been a part of. As a junior staff person he wasn’t able to really participate in discussion; his job was to listen and take notes.
The subject of discussion was that the company was sending a notice in the mail to communicate that they were changing their billing system. As a part of the change they’d decided to change the color of the paper invoices to blue. In the letter the copywriters had written “We’re the company with the blue bills.”
During the first review meeting someone came up with this hilarious idea: “Why don’t we put in a picture of a duck with a blue bill?” Regrettably the other senior members thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. The letter already had a working layout, but they sent it back to the communications department asking them to insert a blue billed duck.
The communications department hired a designer to draw the duck. There were drafts, revisions, approval at the base level, and then approval at the management level. Then, the duck was sent to the layout department. Unfortunately, here it was discovered that the insertion of the duck threw off the entire format: they couldn’t fit all that content on one page anymore. There needed to be less text.
So, they sent it back to the writers who re-wrote the entire letter so that it would fit. They, in turn, sent it back to the layout department who re-structured the letter so that it would fit both the text and the duck.
Back to the review committee, who looked at the final product. They liked it. But what was the cost? $28,000. For a duck.
Let’s review the mistakes this big, publicly traded company made. Leave a comment citing everything you see wrong with this picture.
You need an audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re running an ad campaign, or sending a newsletter, your content is useless without people to receive it.
When you’re starting off something new, or looking to reach a new group of contacts, you will experience the great temptation. This is the voice in your head that says: “I need to find someone else with an audience, and send my campaign to those people.”
The great temptation manifests itself in different forms:
Simply put, broadcasting to an anonymous sea of recipients doesn’t work. People receive thousands of messages a day; they’ve learned to dissociate from mass media. Which is more powerful: a list of 1 million with a response rate of 0.00001% or your own audience of 30 where everyone is actively engage with your message?
You need to build your own audience: a group of people that want to hear from you, and will keep coming back time and time again.
Communication. You use it in your business and your personal life. You use it to speak to your team and you use it to sell yourself.
The challenge is doing it well.
You need help to define, sharpen and deliver your message across a variety of mediums: email, web, print, audio and video.
We’re here to give you simple rules and tools to help you communicate strong. Come back often and we’ll give you a regular dose of strongcasting wisdom.
