Monica O'Brien is the author of the book Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. Social Pollination provides a strategic blueprint that helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth! For a limited time, purchase Social Pollination and get a free membership to Monica's private coaching forum.

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Twitter

Why I love Google Buzz (and why you should too!)

By Monica O'Brien | February 11th in Blogging

36 comments

Google-BuzzThe big news this week is Google Buzz and the questions are numerous:

  • Is this a [insert social network here] killer?
  • What do I do with Buzz?
  • Is the service redundant when we have Twitter and Facebook already?

I love Google Buzz. I checked my email all day and signed up for the service within minutes of getting activated. As I used it for the first time, I felt a tiny ounce of how I imagine a drug addict feels when they shoot up. Yes, it’s that addictive. After playing with the service for a little while, I wanted to offer my initial thoughts on the service and what I think it means for individuals, companies, and the social digital industry as a whole.

Find out why you will love Google Buzz

Gen Y Marketing Trends Point to Twitter, Not Facebook

By Monica O'Brien | November 5th in Marketing

39 comments

Gen Y growing upDoes your business serve Gen Y? If so, your #1 network should be Twitter, not Facebook.

Historically, moms, teens, and college students have been the most sought after (and most difficult to understand) marketing demographics. Get these groups on your side and your product will be a success, especially when you are a small business looking for brand awareness and lead generation.

The good news is that all three of these groups now fit under one larger group – Generation Y. According to The Parents Network, 68% of all births are to millennial moms (not Gen X). College students round out the middle of this generation, while teens are at the tail end.

It’s a no-brainer: most companies need to pay more attention to Gen Y marketing because this is the ultimate target demographic right now.

Gen Y is headed to Twitter

While Facebook’s average age has risen from 26 to 33 in the last year, Twitter’s average age is steady at 31 – and it’s dropping. Twitter is now the second youngest network of the big 4 (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). Furthermore, Gen Y now accounts for around 50% of Twitter’s network (if you assume Gen Y starts with people born in 1978 or later, making the demographic 31 years or younger).

young-people-twitter

This is good news for companies, especially those frustrated with low traction on Facebook fan pages. Compared to Facebook, Twitter is a more open platform that people use to get information from an extended network, rather than a tight knit network of friends. Twitter also works well for providing the information Gen Y values from companies and plays into the way Gen Y discovers products naturally.

From a company’s perspective, Twitter is far better for connecting with Gen Y than Facebook. Here’s some more evidence:

Gen Y wants honesty and optimism

According to research from Hill & Knowlton, there is a direct correlation between a company’s reputation and willingness of consumers to act (in most cases, purchase products or services). The research found that right now, early post-recession, consumers care most about companies that demonstrate honesty and optimism. Obama leveraged this emotional need to win the election, and other smart companies are also using this insight to their advantage.

Ford, for example, has seen success in the market recently due to better quality products (Consumer Reports rates them next to Honda in a recent issue) and its bailout rejection earlier this year. The company has been honest and optimistic over the past 6 years, but this wasn’t clear to consumers until recently. Social media, especially Twitter, has played a powerful role in Ford changing its reputation, and the 3rd quarter earnings prove it. (The company’s next target? Gen Y.)

Consumers want honesty and optimism, and to Gen Y this comes down to being transparent and authentic. Twitter is a fantastic way for companies to demonstrate these traits. Facebook? Not so much.

Gen Y looks to communities to deal with major life events

Gen Y as a demographic is going through huge life changes right now: graduation from high school or college, moving out of the house, getting married, starting new jobs, and starting families. According to a study done by Mr. Youth, the way Gen Y deals with life changes is by turning to online communities for support.

Facebook is an online community, but most of Gen Y still operates with a closed network. For Gen Y, Facebook is not a place to network with new people or to share information. The foundation of a community consists of new contacts and new information, making Facebook a horrible place to build new communities (but a great place to nourish old ones). Twitter, on the other hand, is all about experimenting with your community.

Companies that help Gen Y build communities around life events win, and Twitter is the perfect place to find and engage individuals to form a community.

Gen Y wants to connect on a personal level

Gen Y is obsessed with customization, from their music lists to their sneakers to their vampire novels. The demographic has also been bombarded with advertising during their lives, so they can smell BS through their iPhones.

Gen Y wants you to connect with them personally. There is no shortcut. Email automation doesn’t work, and Facebook makes it almost impossible to connect on a personal level unless you actually know someone personally. But on Twitter, “personal” is built-in – it’s first and foremost a conversation tool.

Gen Y gets annoyed with product campaigns

Gen Y, more than any other generation, learns about products through their peers rather than advertising. This means that one-and-done campaigns don’t work nearly as well as building long-term relationships with this demographic, because you want brand advocates and good reviews instead of immediate action.

Campaigns that use incentives are effective, but only if you are looking for very short-term results. In the long run, you can’t force Gen Y to talk about you, and this demographic will run from anything that asks them to do anything that even remotely seems like spamming their friends. Instead, you should build a platform of useful content that builds trust, establishes credibility, and keeps Gen Y coming back. Eventually, a portion will come back as customers.

You can build a platform on Facebook, but it’s not easy if you don’t have a loyal fan base already. (That’s why they’re called “fan” pages.) If you are looking to build brand awareness on Facebook and you don’t want to spend money on ads, you’re stuck. But Twitter is one of the easiest places to build a platform because people are open to connections, your content can be short (the opposite of blogs), your profile is easy to maintain, and viral ideas spread in real-time.

The stars are aligned.

Gen Y is getting on Twitter, which just so happens to be the best place for companies to reach them. According to Marketing Profs, SMBs also plan to step up their Twitter game in 2010, especially younger companies which are presumably focused on building brand awareness and finding customers.

SMBs-use-Twitter-for-marketing

To me, the Gen Y marketing trends are pointing to Twitter, not Facebook.

What do you think? Have you seen more success on Twitter or Facebook?

I also want to hear from Gen Y – do you connect with companies on Twitter or Facebook?

Integrating email marketing with social media

By Monica O'Brien | November 3rd in Marketing

11 comments

LijitAccording to the newest Small Business Marketing Health Check report from Hurwitz, the top business challenge for small businesses is by far attracting and retaining customers. As a result, most small businesses are turning to digital marketing channels. Over 70% of small businesses surveyed are using social media channels like blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, while nearly 50% are using email marketing techniques.

The question the report poses is, how can we integrated social media efforts with email marketing to meet the challenge of attracting and retaining customers?

The best welcome email I’ve ever received

As you may have noticed, I recently revamped my website. In doing so, I added a new search service I’ve been meaning to look into called Lijit.

I first heard about Lijit through a fellow blogger, Grace Boyle, who works at the company. Several of my online friends were also using Lijit, so it was a service I definitely wanted to learn more about. My biggest question was, “Why use this instead of Google Search?”

My question was answered without me even asking, within a day of signing up for the service and setting it up on my site. Here’s the email I received from Grace:
best-welcome-letter-ever

You’ll notice I highlighted a few sections of the email that I thought were special:

  1. A simple personal greeting – fairly basic, shows me that the company at least knows my name and cares to use it.
  2. An entire introductory paragraph that is personalized with my website and exactly what I downloaded and when. Nope, this wasn’t a standard, automated email we send to everyone, so I read more closely.
  3. Over 11,000 users. Social proof. This demonstrates I’m in great company, and making a smart decision by using Lijit.
  4. SPECIAL SAUCE! I love special sauce. Let’s break it down:
    • This is a great, non-confrontational way to say “Hey, you missed some functionality we think you should use” without actually saying it.
    • “Don’t worry, we turned it on for you, because you are cool and we want to share our most useful secrets with you.” No need for me to do extra work to try it.
    • “The features will be live shortly.” A soft call to action to log in and see the new features.
  5. “A really special tip from me as your friend (not the company), to optimize your usage of Lijit as a blogger.” More personalization, more connection. And I have to admit, the tip is a simple but powerful one that I’ll definitely be using!
  6. “I hope all is well.” Email me back and let me know how you’re doing, even if you don’t have questions. We’re not just in business together, but we’re also friendly.

Overall, the email message was incredibly personalized and brought forward a ton of great features that told me why I should stick with Lijit.

So many companies tell me that their email marketing conversion rates are low (less than 10% opens), and my response is I wish more small businesses did this. Sure, it takes some time to send out personalized email messages to every new user, but it’s clearly a great investment. Besides, you can probably see how easy it would be to create a template and personalize it for different people, or even do something automated that’s a little more personalized.

UPDATE: MarketingSherpa just published research that shows the incredible benefits of putting more efforts into your email system.

Personalized email marketing pays

Personalized email marketing pays

The facts don’t lie: automation is half as effective as relevant, personalized content.

Integrating email marketing with social media marketing

Some companies think this has to be hard, but I can’t think of anything easier. Grace is the perfect example of someone who integrates email marketing with social media, because she blogs, tweets, and creates personal relationships with lots of people online. While I did find out about Lijit from Grace, she never once reached out to me to push the product. She always looked to establish a personal relationship with her outreach, with the fact that she worked at Lijit a far afterthought.

6 months later, when I was doing a site redesign, I thought of how I should try the service. Grace’s social media interactions are what planted the seed in my mind, while her follow-up email is what will keep me using the service and probably turn me into a brand advocate.

If you want to better integrate social media with your email marketing,

  • Hire people who already blog, tweet, and generally build relationships online to do your business development and/or community management.
  • Let those people initiate contact when someone new signs up for the service. You can switch your new user to more general newsletters after the initial contact.
  • Let them handle customer support from their personal accounts in addition to the company account. The roles are blending anyway.

Do these things to meet your goal of attracting and retaining customers.

How do you use email marketing? How do you integrate email marketing with social media?