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The Jim Morrison guide to relevance through social marketing Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

From Ray’s NETT blog:

What are the most important factors to consider when you’re communicating ideas to people? How do you get your message across successfully?

From my days as a journalist writing for newspapers and magazines through to my current work presenting digital marketing messages or lecturing to students, a few common themes have emerged in terms of what works consistently.

Actually, I exaggerate – there is really just one fundamental rule in successful communication: make your concept relevant to your target audience.

This is expressed as a couple of acronyms:

• WIFFM – what’s in it for me?
• WSIC – why should I care?

If you can understand what matters to your audience and work out how to relate your message to their concerns, you’ll get your point across.

This principle isn’t limited to written, visual or verbal communication messages: it extends to the communication of ideas, and can include the dissemination of those ideas through a variety of media.

Take music, for example. My favourite band of all time is the Doors, led by the late great Jim Morrison. The Doors tapped into the Zeitgeist of the 1960s with music that protested against traditional mores.

Their sometimes dark messages about love, fitting in and pushing back against parental barriers struck a chord with young Baby Boomers who were just starting to flex their muscles and question the structures of the world that they were inheriting.

Read the full story


The more things change… Monday, August 22nd, 2011

From Ray’s NETT blog:

Despite working with new technology every day (or maybe because of it!), I like to collect old wares, and my idea of a good weekend includes some time spent trawling through antique and vintage shops.

A recent acquisition was a set of books on ‘modern business’ produced by the Alexander Hamilton Institute back in the 1950s. I was, of course, drawn to the volume on marketing. On leafing through it, I was surprised by how relevant much of the information still was, after nearly 60 years and several seismic shifts in marketing and selling.

Here are a few snippets from the book (with my annotations):

“Marketing concerns itself with all those business activities which begin in the producer’s shipping room and continue until the goods finally come to rest in the hands of the ultimate user.” (This is a timeless reminder as many people equate marketing with just the advertising and promotional aspects of the process. This broad spectrum definition is today even broader as digital and social media marketing extend the process past the delivery of goods and into an ongoing lifetime relationship with customers.)

“The satisfying of human wants depends to no small degree upon the personal and subjective wants and desires of individual consumers.” (This is increasingly relevant as we have moved from the age of mass marketing, which was gearing up when that book was written, to today’s trend toward mass customisation.)

“The basic law of marketing is the ‘law of convention and revolt’. A new mode of life may be created or established, but it will last only until a new style is introduced, often by quick substitution.” (When that was written they were talking about seasonal changes in fashion; now a style can go in and out with days. It’s not strictly a business marketing example, but how long did the planking craze take over public consciousness – was it a couple of weeks, or even less?)

Read the full story


Feed the beast, affordably Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

From Ray’s NETT blog:I’ve written in this blog previously about the extra demands on your business time created by new technology. One of the biggest pressures is the pressure to publish.

Rebecca Lieb, former chief editor of ClickZ and head of information merchant Econsultancy in the US, said to me in an interview, “Brands are not just businesses; they’re now media companies.” As a result, she said, all businesses now have to think like an editor.

That means you need to stop viewing your marketing with a campaign mindset (with a beginning, middle and end) and adopt a long-term perpetual strategy.

Constantly changing content is a necessary feature of this approach. Your online presence – your website, your social media activities, etc. – is now, to use one of my favourite phrases, “the beast that must be fed”.

I make part of my living out of helping large organisations “feed the beast”, while some companies hire their own in-house team of writers and editors to produce search-friendly content for their various online outlets. But most small businesses don’t have a big budget (or any budget at all, in some cases) available to feed this hungry mouth. What can you do?

You need to work smart and plan how you will feed the beast effectively and efficiently. Thinking like an editor, you will want to develop an annual editorial calendar for creating new content for your site, as well as publishing regular features and “sticky stuff”, quirky things that keep people coming back to your site.

So what types of interesting content can a small business produce without breaking the bank? Here are a few examples..

Read the full article


Pick your battles Sunday, July 24th, 2011

From my NETT blog:


Technology can help you accomplish a wide range of business tasks without needing to engage other people to get them done. But that doesn’t mean that it’s the way you should use it.

In a past life, I worked for the 2000 Sydney Olympics writing speeches for the CEO of the Paralympic Games. Most of the speeches I wrote back then revolved around the same theme: interdependence.

The CEO would often explain to audiences that when you’re a child, you’re dependent upon your parents for all your needs. As you grow up, you learn to take control of your own life and become independent.

Most people believe independence is the end game. However, as the CEO would point out, independence is only a step along the journey of interdependence. Working with other people and developing relationships of mutual co-operation is a higher form of psychological and social development, she would say.

This philosophy was an eye-opener to me at the time. It’s what the idea of community is all about – people working together to enrich their lives and accomplish more than they each could on their own.

Despite this epiphany, when I started my small business several years later, I forgot what she’d taught me. While I engaged contractors to perform some of the work, I focused on doing as much as possible myself – client liaison, project management, invoicing, marketing and sales, even bookkeeping.

Read the rest of the article


Target those who need you most - NETT blog Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Our politicians have shown they could learn a thing or two from small business when it comes to marketing their wares.

You can be the best at something, but if people don’t know about it, that fact won’t get you anywhere.

The federal election brought home for me the importance of positioning and promotion when you’re marketing your business. The shambolic campaign and aftermath showed that you can be running the only western economy to emerge unscathed from the global financial crisis, which should be enough to get you elected a saint, but if you can’t sell your accomplishments – and you let your competitors dictate the agenda – you will be severely spanked.

Policy waffling, backstabbing and leaks didn’t help, but history tells us that Australians give a neophyte government a second chance, even if it’s made mistakes. For the government to have so many runs on the board, the election should have been a walkover. To my mind, Labor’s biggest problems were a lack of firm positioning and an inability to sell itself to its customer base – uh, I mean the electorate.

These principles also apply to running a small business. It’s not enough to be the best-in-class for service, delivery, reliability, range or innovation; if your customers and potential customers don’t know it, you won’t survive.

The first step in this process is positioning. You need to work out what you’re best at; what your salient attribute or point of difference is, and why it’s meaningful to your customers. It’s only worth focusing on a defining attribute if:

Read the rest here:  http://nett.com.au/blogs/target-those-who-need-you-most/162.html


Do it for love AND money Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Here’s a preview of my first column in NETT magazine - click through to read the whole piece:

What’s the secret to financial success for small businesses? It turns out that Dr Seuss could hold the key.

Everyone has an idea for their dream job. Mine is to be the Australian Stieg Larsson.

Am I doing my dream job? Not yet, but like many small business owners, I’m working towards it by channelling my passion for words and ideas into a more tangible commercial enterprise.

Follow your passion and the money will follow. Opinion is strongly divided on the truth of this aphorism. Is it a good idea commercially to follow your dream? Plenty of passionate people without the requisite business skills have gone broke following their passion. I think the reverse is true: if you don’t have that passion, you can almost guarantee mediocre results.

In his latest book Linchpin, marketing guru Seth Godin talks about emotional labour, some essential part of yourself that can’t be automated or outsourced. This emotional labour, he argues, spells the difference between ‘just a job’ and ‘work’.

Sonia Simone, writing for the Copyblogger blog, says: “When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to look for a paint-by-numbers solution. Something that works a lot like a franchise, with a three-ring binder that explains what buttons to push.

‘The problem with push-button systems is that you can train a robot, or an ultra low-wage worker offshore, to push that button for you.
“What happens when someone comes along who can push the button 104% more efficiently than you can? Or who can push it at 97% of your cost?”

Small business success, she writes, lies with the emotional labour you bring to the task at hand. “It’s about the part that wants your creativity, your strange ideas, your ADHD, your intersection of interests, your passion, your giving a damn, your hard thinking. Simply put, it’s the love that you put into it.”

Read the whole column here: http://nett.com.au/blogs/do-it-for-love-and-money/135.html

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


Marketing-advertising shift signals need for content Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

In an interview with Zazoo published this week on the HotHouse blog, Econsultancy vice president Rebecca Lieb observed that the Internet is bringing about a fundamental shift in power within companies from advertising to marketing.

She says that “not only has online search technology made it simple for customers to connect with businesses, the evidence shows that most searchers are going straight to a company’s website for more information about their products. In other words, it’s not advertising driving people to your business online, it’s search.”

Companies, she says, need to shift their thinking from an emphasis on advertising to an emphasis on marketing and content creation. That means there’s “lots more media to play with. And it’s free – but that doesn’t mean you can mess with it.”

In the digital age, she says, you need a long-term perpetual strategy. To be able to successfully develop and execute a perpetual strategy, according to Rebecca, “You need to think like an editor.”

“Brands are not just businesses,” Rebecca says, they’re now media companies.”

An excerpt from the story:

“…traditional media based their business model on a (mostly) clear separation between advertising and content. What happens when the ‘advertiser’ is also the content provider?

“In the digital context, according to Rebecca Lieb, ‘Being authoritative is more important than being objective – though transparency and disclosure are incredibly important.

“’If, for example, you’re a sporting goods company and you publish information on your site about mountain climbing. That information can be entertaining. The information is not invalid, as long as you know where it’s coming from.’

“Rebecca concludes: ‘The rules aren’t different; it’s the channels that are shifting.’”

Are you ready to act like a publisher with your website and social media program?


Zazoo writes for NETT on online video Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Zazoo was asked to put together a workshop article for NETT magazine on how to promote your business online using video. The article has been published in this month’s issue (see a PDF version here).

Here are a couple of excerpts:

“Online video is no longer a nice-to-have addition to your marketing mix: it’s becoming an essential tool for small businesses trying to stand out in a crowded market. Yet, often the biggest challenge for SMEs interested in creating online video is taking that first step. Your dream may be to create something that goes viral, but where do you start? How do you make it interesting enough to get people to watch – and then spread the message? The good news is, creating online video is getting cheaper and easier to do.

“….The biggest challenge for businesses, especially SMEs, is taking the first step. Video can confound people who are only familiar with traditional marketing. Developing an interesting concept is the next challenge. Viewers have been conditioned by years of television watching to expect video to be entertaining as well as informational, so that talking head presentation from your MD is an online video no-no.

“….Each video and each campaign is different, so work out ways you candetermine the success of your video in meeting your goals.How can you tell whether increased sales are due to your video? You do things like link from the video to a particular landing page on your site instead of the home page. Measure hits to this page and add a call-to-action…. As you produce more videos, you can see what type of content gives you the most business impact.”

Keep on the lookout for future articles in NETT and other publications.

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


“Think like an editor” - podcast Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Last week I interviewed Rebecca Lieb, US vice-president for the digital marketing research and publishing company Econsultancy, for a HotHouse podcast on the topics of search engine optimisation and content strategy. Her main message: Like it or not, the evolution of search on the Internet now means that every company is a publisher - people are going to come straight to your website for information about your products/services and about your category in general. As a result, you need to “think like an editor” and create fresh, engaging content for your website - constantly.

The podcast has now been published on the HotHouse blog - you can listen to it/download it here. I’ll also provide links to related articles that will be published on the HoHouse blog as soon as they’re published later this month.

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


Apple’s iPad to save newspapers? I don’t think so Monday, February 1st, 2010

I sympathise with the traditional press, I really do. They are expending an enormous amount of effort trying to come up with ways of salvaging their infrastructure investments in printing presses, paper and distribution networks. Their latest tactic is jumping on the Apple iPad bandwagon, claiming that all-singing, all-dancing multimedia versions of newspapers and magazines (think Minority Report) will lead to a resurgence of traditional media publishing companies. But, as Robert Niles points out on the Online Journalism Review, the iPad will help newspapers and magazines in the short run, but will not save them in the end.

“I know that many news managers desperately want some technological innovation to come along that will turn back time and make people fall in love with printed content again. But paid circulation and readership were falling at most U.S. newspapers long before the World Wide Web made it easier for people dissatisfied with their local newspapers to find many more alternatives. The problem isn’t the Web - it’s that people have been rejecting and, in increasing numbers, continue to reject paying for the content offered by newspapers’ newsrooms, in any medium,” he writes.

He says the only ways that a new publishing platform will increase revenue for a publisher are if it: 1) replaces a previous platform; 2) expands availability of its content, allowing entry into a new customer market; or 3) provides a more suitable medium for its content, increasing desirability and demand.

“The iPad, and eReaders in general, don’t replace any other publisher platforms; they merely provide an additional option. Nor do these readers significantly expand the availability of content beyond that already established by the Internet and smart phones,” Niles writes.

“Someone will devise content that’s perfect for the iPad. It will likely take advantage of the device’s larger screen and portability and involve individual customization. (It’ll likely do much more, too.)

“But after a decade and a half of online production, most newsrooms haven’t substantially changed their print-focused production process. It’s hard for me to imagine that the iPad coming along will now force that change, when Web browsers and smart phones didn’t in the past.

“No, newsrooms that are suffering in the market need to quit looking for new revenue models and quit longing for new delivery platforms. Instead, they should focus on one thing… If you aren’t connecting with an audience and customers, you need to improve your content so that you do.”

He concludes: “Neither iPads, nor paywalls, nor government subsidies will long save a publication that too few care to read. Is your news business in trouble? Quit longing for saviors, and start producing better content.”

I am a digital immigrant who still loves to hold a newspaper in his hand, but I am also the parent of digital natives who would not pay for a newspaper if, well, if you paid them. We are in a transition period, and I sadly acknowledge that I am a member of the last generation that will regularly read newspapers. iPad or no iPad, the traditional media need to admit that they have to change their fundamental business model if they are to exist in any recognisable form in the coming decades.


Google can’t do it all: a call for content curators Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

I have been reading quite a bit of late about the concept of content curation, a term coined by marketing strategist and blogger Rohit Bhargava to describe the role of “someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. The most important component of this job is the word ‘continually.’…  (It is s)omeone whose job it is not to create more content, but to make sense of all the content that others are creating. To find the best and most relevant content and bring it forward.”

He writes that, “In the near future, experts predict that content on the web will double every 72 hours. The detached analysis of an algorithm will no longer be enough to find what we are looking for…. The future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume and take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others. In time, these curators will bring more utility and order to the social web. In doing so, they will help to add a voice and point of view to organizations and companies that can connect them with customers - creating an entirely new dialogue based on valued content rather than just brand created marketing messages.”

Robin Good writes on the Master New Media blog, “I think, that at least for now, curating content is the one thing that Google can’t take your place in doing. When it comes to researching, selecting, picking, editing, juxtaposing, illustrating, complementing, referencing, crediting, commenting and introducing, Google can just pack its stuff and go home.

“….Unless there is a growing number of active newsmasters, content curators and editors/publishers checking, digesting, filtering, grouping and organizing information inside vertical information silos you will be either submerged by information or you will be left behind when it comes to staying on top of the information you need to operate in your field.

“Business-wise, content curators could also offer an interesting marketing opportunity and a new business model that makes a lot of sense to me.”

Meanwhile, Australian digital recruiter David Jackson writes on the Digital Ministry website, “There are already a few people performing this task for companies, and it will only grow in importance. The problem I see with content curating is that most companies find it hard to place much value on the role. Although it requires a skill set that combines the sharp mind of a research analyst with the communications flair of a journalist and the commercial nous of a marketer, curating content, like creating content, often attracts a wage more akin to a junior administrator.”

Links on this topic:


Shameless self-promotion, part XVI Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

I was interviewed a few weeks ago for an article on social media marketing in NETT magazine. The article, “Not all conversations are markets“, published this week, canvasses the views of a range of communication and marketing experts about issues in social media facing businesses today. It covers areas such as:

  • What department should be responsible for social media? (My vote went for the marketing department)
  • Should you try and control what your employees do and say on social networks, particularly during work hours?
  • Should businesses create “trusted avatars” and “sock puppets” (unidentified company spokespeople who try and create and steer conversations on social networks)? (The overwhelming answer was ‘No’)
  • Should you buy lists of friends? (Again, ‘No’)
  • What’s the proper etiquette for joining in on conversations in social networks?

It’s worth a read (of course I would say that, wouldn’t I?).

While on the subject of self-promotion, here are other marketing/social media articles and podcasts we’ve produced recently, for the HotHouse blog:

  • A messy village of communication and Branding’s mid-life crisis - Podcast interview with US branding expert Jonathan Salem Baskin and accompanying article about his book “Branding Only Works on Cattle”
  • Greater than the sum of the parts, The great juggling act and Confetti on the screen – Podcast interview with Australian Internet pioneer Tony Surtees and accompanying articles

    • - Ray Welling, Content Guy


    A panoply of podcasts on e-marketing Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

    Warning: shameless self-promotion alert!

    Zazoo has been producing a series of podcasts on e-marketing for interactive marketing agency HotHouse. Here are some links to recent podcasts:

    Also, visit the HotHouse blog for erudite commentary on the digital industry!


    It’s not just me - no, really, I mean it, it isn’t just me! Friday, March 13th, 2009

    Once you start getting involved in the digital or social media business, you tend to lose perspective. You can see all these cool things happening out there, and you’re linking up with all sorts of interesting people via Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook, and you get this feeling that, for once in your life, you’re riding the crest of a wave (forgive me if my surfing analogy is a bit skewiff, but I grew up in the land-locked American Midwest) and involved in something with enormous social and business potential.

    Meanwhile, your family and friends shake their head when you tell them what you do all day and wonder what on earth is the point of linking up with people you don’t know from a bar of soap and exchanging 140-character missives on Twitter that are largely on the topic of Twitter. It’s a good reality check to engage with the ‘real’ people in your life and see that, just maybe, you’re overestimating the effect and potential, and  that most people couldn’t care less about digital communication.

    Well, a new report just published by NetPop Research shows that YOU SEE, I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG - DIGITAL SOCIAL MEDIA IS EXPLODING! Yes, it’s a US report and Australia is further behind this curve, but get a load of these numbers:

    • More than 100 million Americans are regularly posting material to social media sites - that’s one-third of the population
    • Use of social media has doubled in the past two years alone
    • 7 million people, known as ‘power users’, interact with about 250 people a week via digital social networking (yes, that’s more than 30 people a day)

    See Mum, I didn’t waste that college tuition by spending my days surfing the Internet!


    Shirt-folding beats political history Thursday, December 11th, 2008

    Attended the Thoughtworks Quarterly Technology Briefing in Sydney yesterday, where the heads of News Digital Media (Sue Klose) and Fairfax Digital (Pippa Leary) outlined developments in online media in Australia, and picked up some interesting facts about Australian online media consumption:

    • There are two spikes in visits to online news sites - at the beginning of the workday, when people check the news headlines; and at lunchtime, when they eat lunch at their desk and go for more entertainment info and videos
    • 35,000 people watched the live stream of Barack Obama’s victory speech on Fairfax Digital. That same day, a video on the site about how to fold a shirt was viewed by 39,000 people
    • Fairfax is claiming 2 million unique user per month just to its business and finance content, with 25-30 average page impressions per user
    • Online video advertising is expected to reach US$2.9 billion in the US in 2009 - 13% of the online advertising total - but the figures for Australia are expected to be only a fraction of that

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