Exponential marketing is another way of describing viral marketing.  It brings out more strongly that each person in the chain of communication passes on the word to several other people.  In a way it has similarities with MLM – multi-level marketing. 

A meme is a new word created to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.  This works because each person is encouraged to tag as many people as possible and ask them to spread the word.   Like MLM, the meme process can occasionally run out of people to whom to pass the word but in its early stages it can be very effective.

There is one on the go at the moment to publicize the IM Spring Break.  This is a conference put on by IMBroadcast.com, the first video sharing site strictly for the Internet Marketing community.  It was founded by three Internet Marketers, Loren Baker, Jordan Kasteler, and Dave Snyder.

On their blog, they describe a contest involving a meme, whereby the winner will get free attendance at the conference.  The winner will be the person getting the most involvement in the meme-spreading as mentioned by pingbacks to their blog post.  The blog post should list the 7 things you think will happen at IM Spring Break with emphasis on news-worthiness.

Alysson Fergison (aka SEOaly) hopes to be that winner and she tagged among others  David Leonhardt of The Happy Guy Marketing.  He in turn has included me as one of his tags.

I must admit it sounds to be a very amiable event with a really good crowd. Just see some of the attendees: Loren Baker, Jordan Kasteler, Dave Snyder, Chris Winfield, Rae Hoffman, Greg Finn, Kenny Hyder, Steve Plunkett, Zaibatsu (Reg Sadler), Neal Rodriguez, Brent Csutoras, Todd Malicoat, and Jeff Quipp.  With such participants, one might question what will not happen at this IM Spring Break.  Rae Hoffman is even discussing NDA so perhaps what goes on at the Hilton Deerfield Beach will stay there in the spirit of Non-disclosure.

Perhaps those I tag for the meme will be more creative on 7 things that will occur.  I’m tagging via their Twitter presences Ruud Hein, Donna Fontenot and Peter Meyers.  After all we have got to do our best to get SEOaly to that Break for the mud-wrestling event.

Post from: BPWrap

Exponential Marketing – Meme Links

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The recent US Presidential election was a stunning demonstration of the power of social media as now supported via the Internet.  Indeed social media such as Twitter may now be the principal medium of communication if one measures the ‘bandwidth’, interpreted loosely, that goes into such twittering. 

Now the dreadful incidents in Mumbai provide another far-too shocking example.  That prompts Tim Malbon to ask a fundamental question: Mumbai: flash mob or social media in action?

When news of the ‘terrorist outrage’ broke yesterday evening several people mailed and messaged me with links to the coverage on Twitter. I was awestruck by the live feeds provided at #Mumbai and others (such as Twitter Grid). Having looked around elsewhere, my initial reaction was that the main old-school news agencies like Reuters, CNN and the BBC just weren’t providing the coverage, in contrast to the truly MASSIVE volume of tweeting going on.

However as the evening continued, he become somewhat disillusioned about the chaotic nature of the torrent of information that was being generated

There were no doubt many well-meaning people Twittering. Some on the ground were no doubt using the service to share their personal horror and to connect with the outside world must have been a comfort. But very few were on the ground. Most participants were far away. There needs to be some way of working out who in a situation like this has more authority than someone else. … Last night scared me. We’re like kids playing with things that we still don’t understand. A human tragedy became “something to follow”.

Crowdsourcing is of course an attempt to bring some order to the chaos.  Cloud computing in Africa, for example, can help aid workers to better identify what is really happening in major crises. As one aid worker has noted:

Crowdsourcing means that crisis situations can be explored at comparatively little cost, by making information freely available from an untold numbers of sources. We would basically be liberating information from the vaults of Non Governmental (and governmental) Organizations that have of necessity safeguarded information release for self-preservation.

Another and perhaps better way of marshaling all this data is to consider online surveys.  Of course cell phones can be used merely to indicate who you think should be the next American Idol.  However as we all become more at ease in the digital world, we may well be more inclined to make sure our opinions are known.

Post from: BPWrap

The Internet is Twitter

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Courtesy www.PeggyDuncan.com

This morning, I became acquainted with what Jay Deragon has been writing on social media and suddenly the light came on.  As he said:

There is Friendfeed, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and a host of other platforms and tools for social conversations and user generated content. To say the least the space is very confusing and crowded if not overwhelming for those just entering and trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. While all these conversations stir interest, few focus on the critical elements required to effectively leverage the art and science of social media for specific gains.

That passage is taken from his article, Is Social Media An Art?  He goes on to say that the four driving factors are:

1. Attention: Businesses and individuals are using the tools of the social web to garner attention from specific consumer markets of interest to the audience and the business.
2. Attraction: To keep people’s attention a focus on design, content and utility are the elements which create stickiness which indicates attractiveness.
3. Affinity: Content, design and community are the attributes of creating affinity to the proposition and the users of the online community. Unless the conversations related to the user’s needs or interest the attraction is lost because the users find little affinity to the conversations.
4. Audience: Once 1, 2 & 3 are accomplished then you have an audience to provide continuous value propositions in order to reinforce 1, 2 & 3.

He summarizes that in another article, Is SM ROI Really Important? which is when the light bulb moment occurred. 

The more business people I talk to about all this social stuff the consistent response I get is “Show me how to make money with it”.

Any good sales person will tell you their number one objective is building relationships over time. Yet few if any company bothers to measure the cost of building relationships rather they measure the results of relationships. Measuring the results doesn’t tell you “how to build effective relations” or “which methods create the best relations.”

Relationships come from human experiences, not corporate spin and hyped promises. Human relationships are measured by trust, sincerity and common values. If you want a return on social media, then focus on conversations that build lasting relationships based on value exchanged and create great experiences.

There you have the crux of the matter.  Your company should measure how well it is working with social media by evaluating the relationships the company is creating with its customers and its prospects.  Unless worthwhile relationships are created, then efforts in social media will be ineffective and may even be without value.

Post from: BPWrap

Relationships and Social Media

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If you think viral marketing is something of recent years, then just check out the following video.

That is from the 1970′s when Fabergé Organics was using this idea in promoting Honey & Wheat Germ Shampoo.  It was Fabergé and not Breck, as many people think, that was responsible for that famous phrase, "she told two friends".

I strongly believe that it is better to call this type of marketing exponential marketing rather than viral marketing.  That is the approach that eWORDofMOUTH offers to its customers in claiming that Word of Mouth Marketing Meets the Power of the Internet.  They claim to do this by combining Customer Referral Programs with Viral Email Marketing to grow the Customer Base EXPONENTIALLY (their capitals rather than mine).  However I believe their approach is sound.

Social media are clearly powerful vehicles for such exponential marketing.  You will often see the share icon shown at the left at the foot of a blog post or a video.  As the Share Icon Project web page suggests:
The Share Icon is becoming the de facto standard visual representation for sharing content from any source to multiple destinations: over email, to bookmark or memetracker sites, to your friends on social networks, and more every day.

It is certainly encouraging to see its wide acceptance.  Visually it reminds you to pass it to two people rather than just passing it to a single friend.  However I think they were perhaps too influenced by Fabergé.

Remember we are talking exponential marketing here.  Exponential marketing can have explosive results if you do it right.  You may have forgotten about the power of the exponent from your school days but this little table may remind you.

This shows the number of friends who get the message if it has been passed on five times and each friend tells it to 2, 3, 4 or 5 friends in every case.  Of course not everyone will tell the maximum number but the results will be proportionate.  In other words if you encourage everyone to tell 5 friends, the message will reach almost 100 times more people than if you told them to pass it on to 2 friends.

I think everyone should be encouraged to pass on good news to more than two friends and perhaps the icon at the left is a better reminder.  Of course it cannot be called the share icon since that is already taken. Perhaps a better name would be the buzz icon.  I encourage you to use it on your posts and videos. Below you will find smaller versions of the image so you can use whichever is most appropriate.

If you do find the arguments persuasive and do use the icon, then please tell everyone you got it here.  .. and do not forget to call it exponential marketing.  It is powerful stuff.  Can you hear the buzz?

Post from: BPWrap

Wow: that's really exponential

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As Stephen Wilson tells us, Yahoo Buzz is now open to everyone. Yahoo Buzz is a way of telling the world about websites that have particularly delighted you and the Buzz Log gives added visibility to What’s hot on Yahoo! Buzz™.

Yahoo Buzz is a site where you can vote in a similar way to Digg, although it is likely that there will be more editorial control.

As Darren Rowse explains, Yahoo Buzz will appeal to a certain type of audience and reader and will therefore present different opportunities to different publishers.

The burgeoning expansion of social media websites is almost head spinning. Another popular website with some similarities is del.icio.us or as it has recently been transformed into delicious.com. The delicious blog provides some explanations:

Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here

The new Delicious
Over the past few days we’ve been transitioning Delicious over to our new platform, quietly starting with RSS feeds and APIs. Today we’re taking the final step and flipping the switch on the new web site: delicious.com.

The new Delicious is just like the old del.icio.us, only faster, easier to learn, and hopefully more delightful to use and to look at.

It’s even more head spinning when you realize that both Yahoo Buzz and delicious are owned by Yahoo. As Michael Porter so wisely said, “Of course strategy is hard – it’s about making tough choices.” If Yahoo cannot make up its mind, how are we, the poor consumers, to do so.

Post from: BPWrap

Yahoo Buzz Is Quite Delicious

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René Descartes felt that the proof of his existence was that he thought from time to time. Quite a number of people, including Richard Ziade, Richard Buchanan, Charles Rhyne, Graham Chastney among many others, are now confirming their existence by twittering.

It’s been around for some time although some of us were initially reluctant to twitter. Not so for many professionals who apparently have been using twitter extensively for some time. Now over the past few weeks it seems to have entered an explosive growth phase like so many other social media such as Facebook and YouTube.

Twitter is disarmingly simple. You can tweat or receive tweats on your cell phone via instant messaging. 140 characters to tell whoever is listening whatever you feel like telling them. It can be almost like dropping pebbles down a very deep well. Sometimes you hear a splash. Sometimes you don’t. The Twitter FAQ gives a few more details but there is very little more to tell. It’s completely free and there are now a number of widgets (Apps) that simplify the process of twittering.

Twittering is now being used more extensively as an additional channel in Internet marketing. Lee Odden has provided a Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR, while Darren Rowse sets out some Tips for Bloggers. Clearly we’ve only seen the beginning of all this twittering activity.

So what will be the future of this new method of communication. Although it’s free it should not be difficult to monetize Twitter given the huge volume of traffic. The key concern must be whether this will become an increasingly noisy tower of Babel. Will the bandwidth be available to carry all the tweats? Twitter was overloaded apparently when Steve Jobs gave the keynote address at MacWorld 2008. It was again down this morning for a time. Twitter means instant communication. It can only work if instant always means instant.

Related:
35 Twitter Tips from 35 Twitter Users
26 Reasons Why I Love Twitter – Plus 27 More just in Case

Post from: BPWrap

I Twitter Therefore I Am

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Wal-mart Sees The Light.

Wal-mart has changed its mindset. Andy Sernovitz sees it as a landmark moment for consumer empowerment and word of mouth. Whichever way you look at it, something very dramatic has happened.

A Mindset can put blinkers on how you see the world. The Internet is having such a disruptive effect on societies, economies and markets that it is important to be aware of all the implications. To be highly effective now it is important to have an Internet Mindset. That involves many factors but one of the most important is to realize that power has shifted from entities like agencies and companies to individuals.

Many will remember that Wal-mart clearly showed its pre-Internet mindset when its PR consultant, Edelman, encouraged the use of blogs that appeared to be created by members of the general public. These were supposed to show Wal-mart in a good light and attempt to reverse some of the adverse publicity that Wal-mart gets from time to time. When the truth came out that these were in fact Wal-mart blogs, Edelman had to do some fast back-pedalling but the damage was done.

Now it would appear that Wal-mart has seen the light. The blinkers have been removed. It is demonstrating that, in the places that matter, an Internet Mindset prevails. Wal-mart has opened up a new website, walmart.com, that actively encourages true dialogue with consumers. After all, you can either be the object of discussion or take part in the discussion. Wal-mart is now providing the infrastructure to support the discussion.

Hopefully when other entities see that even the mightiest acknowledge the new order of things with the Internet, they too will abandon coercive power plays. They are becoming less and less effective and may even blow up in the faces of the perpetrators. The message is clear: Go with the (Internet) Flow!

Related:
For Wal-Mart, PR = Public Revelations
Do You Have An Internet Mindset?

Post from: BPWrap

Wal-mart Adopts An Internet Mindset

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Li Evans tagged me in a meme on what magazines I read. Like many others I really don’t get involved in memes, but here I am again. It got me thinking on memes and why they don’t die almost as soon as they’re born.

In some ways, a meme is a small-scale simulation of the bigger social media such as Digg or Reddit or Myspace or Facebook. If the group involved or who might become involved looks interesting, then you decide to invest the time to become part of it. A meme has to have a slightly greater USP since it clearly is of limited life. However someone you know asked you to be part of it so there’s a slightly greater incentive to join. However we all know we’re far too busy for this so that person shouldn’t be too upset if they don’t hear any response when they drop the stone down the wishing well.

In this case, it was Andy Beal who started the Meme with his question: What Magazines Do You Read? Li was tagged by Andy and now I carry the baton. If I do tag five people, this will be a pure example of sociability since by now I read very few print magazines that are not online. Instead I fly at hyperlink speed through the RSS news feeds looking for headlines that point to something that intrigues me. The only physical ones I read are for pure enjoyment where I can’t find a satisfactory online substitute. I guess I’m part of the way the world is evolving. So here in no particular order are the few I read:

1. National Geographic
2. Canadian Geographic
3. PME – a French magazine for Quebec entrepreneurs
4. Search Marketing standard

Reading for pleasure usually involves books but those aren’t included in this meme.

So will I/won’t I help this meme to continue. It’s touch and go but social pressures are sometimes insidious and difficult to resist. So I pass on the batons to:

1. William Slawski
2. Donna Fontenot
3. Ev Nucci
4. Jim Hedger
5. Darren Moloney

Don’t worry, there’s no pressure. I won’t mind either way.

Post from: BPWrap

The Magazine Meme – Thoughts On Being Sociable

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That’s the question that Koolio and Joe Duck and many, many thousands of other people are asking. Twitter won the SXSW Web Award this week and that’s partly to blame. However before that it was spreading like wildfire, .. or not depending on what is important to you.

The name is one of the most apt I’ve seen. The Dictionary tells us that twitter means uttering successive chirping noises, talking in a chattering fashion or trembling with agitation. It’s most often seen in birds. Twitter now is a software whereby you can tell whoever wants to know exactly what you’re doing at this very moment. To some that’s a big yawn: to others apparently it’s almost addictive.

Kathy Sierra back in December 2006 highlighted the potential problems with her Asymptotic Twitter Curve. That clearly in no way slowed down the explosive growth. Mitch Joel echoed the thoughts of many others in saying that Twitter Is To Blogging What Post-It Notes Are To Notebooks. More recently he has again affirmed his support in asking whether you can apply Twitter in your Company or your Podcast.

Kathy Sierra now seems to be getting to the heart of the matter with her recent post, Is Twitter TOO good? Twitter is perhaps a singularly addictive example of the social media that everyone is talking about. It may have similarities to that other powerful and time-consuming ‘world’, Second Life. In both cases, if you really want to make your involvement useful and rich, then you’ll have to devote significant time to it. For many like me, there’s enough to do in the First Life without trying to cyber-exist elsewhere.

Post from: BPWrap

To Twitter Or Not To Twitter

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Social media are the new vehicles on the Internet that allow humans to interact with each other. They’re proliferating at an incredible rate. It can be as simple as a commenting system on a blog or voting on videos on YouTube. Most humans are sociable creatures and enjoy such interactions. Not surprisingly social media are becoming more and more popular.

It’s all very human and the normal rules of human behaviour apply. Regrettably people are often drawn to check out an accident or a fire. In the same way, bad news travels much faster than good news.

If proof were needed, a small case in the last two days illustrates the strength of this factor. Lee Odden of TopRankBlog ran a poll on the Best Forums for Search Marketing Tips. The blog post would undoubtedly have drawn a certain amount of traffic. However inadvertently Lee omitted from the poll one of the more popular forums, Cre8asite Forums (of which I am a moderator).

The Cre8asite Forums have their own special character. When Forum members heard of the omission, they headed across in droves to add their comments and show their support for Cre8asite Forums. Undoubtedly the blog post has seen much more traffic than it otherwise would have seed.

Both the Blog and Cre8asite Forums have probably benefited significantly from this glitch. Lee has acknowledged that he had inadvertently omitted Cre8asite Forums from the list. It clearly was not intended as link-bait. Yet the final result is that it is more successful than it otherwise would have been.

[For those interested, at the time of writing Cre8asite Forums with 25 write-in votes in the Comments almost pipped the front runner in the poll, High Rankings Forum, which has 27 votes.]

It almost makes you wonder whether it is better to include some intriguing mistakes in blog posts rather than seeking perfection. That would be a distressing moral to draw from such incidents.

Post from: BPWrap

Social Media – Bad News Travels Faster

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