Friday, October 30, 2009
Powerful uses of viral video
The results of releasing these award-winning viral videos have been tremendous, including:
1) Enormous Industry Buzz – As they say with social media “you don’t communicate to your audience, you communicate through your audience.” These videos passed like wildfire through exactly the stakeholders Qualcomm would like most to reach – all the bright technical people in their ecosystem.
2) Household Name Recognition – These videos were also picked-up by bloggers and trackers of April Fool’s Day videos and extended to a still wider audience who may know little about Qualcomm.
3) Employee Pride – Staffers were able to wallow in the “cool” factor of their company. This was especially true for the Convergence video which used real employees.
4) Recruiting New Talent – Aside from being fun introduction videos any Sales Person would kill to show as an icebreaker, these videos do volumes for Qualcomm efforts to recruit the brightest talent coming out of today’s colleges and universities.
5) Creating Pent-up Demand for the 2010 Video – Awareness has moved to expectation; Qualcomm’s stakeholders are pining to know what kind of video this April will bring.
These and other Qualcomm videos are available on the Qualcomm website “video wall” which is very reminiscent of the brightly lit Qualcomm “Patent Wall” that glows like a beacon at night from their headquarters.
ROI sticklers in the audience wanted to know the revenue payback measures of these viral videos for Qualcomm. Dan responded with statistics surrounding the explosive number of views and visits to their site and even the less specific brand awareness improvements coming from efforts like these and everything else Qualcomm does to support their brand. In the end, it is hard to put a $ value on efforts like these to know if they work. But based upon the positive response of everyone in Qualcomm’s eco-system, Qualcomm executives can rest easy at night knowing their brand is thriving from programs like the viral videos.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Persistence and the Payoff
One of my very favorite quotes is from Calvin Coolidge who said...
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
Time and again this quote has proven to be so true in my career and personal life. So it is no surprise that last weekend persistence paid off, yet again, in the Hume family. Shari, my beautiful, intelligent and always running (literally) wife, was racing in yet another marathon. It was the Chicago Marathon and she was running for Team Cure JM. This was the second time she ran Chicago for the Cure JM Foundation and it was her 10th marathon to date. Count them, 10! Several years ago (probably around her 4th marathon), Shari decided if she was going to inflict this much pain on her body anyway, then she would try to qualify for the Boston Marathon. For the non-marathoners reading this, the Boston Marathon is the Holy Grail of marathons because to qualify for Boston you have to not only run marathons, but you have to run them FAST. The qualifying times are very challenging and for Shari they were alway elusive. One year, she ran 3 marathons trying to hit the qualifying time needed. In one of those marathons, she missed qualifying for Boston by only 5 minutes! Heartbreaking for all of us, but especially Shari. So at Chicago last weekend she went in as a dark horse; no one expected her to have a good race. She just ran a marathon in January (the Carlsbad Marathon for Cure JM) and spent much of the summer nursing injuries. The longest training run she did for Chicago was 10 miles. So while her body was not up for the task of running the Chicago Marathon, Shari was secretly putting her mind in gear to qualify for Boston. When a doubt arose in her mind that she did not train enough, she squashed the doubt by telling herself “yeah, so by not practicing long training runs, my body has less injuries and more strength.” She also thought of all of the children battling juvenile dermatomyositis and the marathons they battle everyday just leading normal lives.
Through shear mental fortitude and the experience of her 9 previous “training marathons,” Shari crossed the finish line with a whole three minutes to spare toward her Boston Marathon qualifying time. Impressively, Shari finished in the top 25% of the 45,000 runners registered for the Chicago Marathon. Over her past 15 years of marathon running, Shari never took her eyes off the prize and last weekend, she reached this monumental goal. Now she is already talking about her next big goal.
My three boys are very proud their Mom qualifyied for Boston. Equally, I am very proud of her qualifying time, but I’m even more proud of the example she sets for her sons to pursue your dreams and never give up.
Never, never, never give up. - Winston Churchill
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The New Marketer’s Toolbox – insights from Duct Tape Marketing
Google Alerts
Central Desktop
Google Reader
TweetDeck
Firefox
Flickr
Snapz Pro X
Adium
ScreenFlow Pro
su.pr
Email Center Pro
Jott
SimpleNote
WordPress
Google Analytics
InfusionSoft
I’ve referred so many people to this list via tweets, emails, and (dare I say it) hard copies, that it was time for me to reference it here. For the full article and detailed descriptions of the tools above, go to the Duct Tape Marketing Blog.
Enjoy!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Location, Location, Location: Google Place Pages: Big Deal You May Have Missed
All small businesses need to capture their physical location on the internet. Sources like Yahoo Directories and Google Maps have allowed business to not only show where they are but to give a little more detail about who they are and why a customer should care.
Now Google Place Pages pulls brick and mortar businesses online whether they like it or not. They now all have a web page which in many cases may be quite simple information, but all the better reason to engage with Google to claim that listing and potentially turn into an AdWords client.
If you have not captured or edited the sites pointing to your location from the web, do it today. Most of these sites are free.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Twelve Quick Uses for Social Media in the Marketing Mix
I constantly meet with SMB owners who confide in me that they “don’t get twitter”. Sometimes they are outspoken about their feelings that social media has yet to find its place in business. However, in most cases they admit (with a feeling of guilt) that they just have not figured out the value. Yet, they know others have found value. In Michael Kahn’s article A Dozen Applications for Social Media from the Chief Marketer site, Michael summaries why business should care.
Here are the 12 uses he promotes:
1. Listen to Your Consumers
2. Talk to Consumers Face-to-Face
3. Brand Yourself as an Expert
4. Monitor and Respond to Customer Service Issues
5. Manage Reputations, React Quickly to Crises
6. Create Massive Conversations about Your Brand
7. Dominate the SERPs
8. Optimize Ads to Perform … Just like Search
9. Microtarget Ideal Users
10. Harvest Data With Custom Apps and Sweepstakes
11. Promote Coupons and Deals to Sell Products
12. Create More Engaging Display Ads
I’ve long advocated that small businesses should get into social media first by listening to customers; so it’s no surprise to me that “customer service” uses of social media rise to the top of Michael list. If you are not doing any of these things, it is time to take your head out of the sand. Your competitors are doing it already but if you’re lucky maybe your competitors are less focused on the customer service applications.
Here is the link to Michael’s article… http://chiefmarketer.com/disciplines/online/0922-social-media-applications/
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Good Karma, Good Business
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Videos on the cheap
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
A must follow blog
http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#4Aoac3/www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/07/14/tracking-your-customers-social-media-activity//
Friday, April 24, 2009
Connecting with your target market
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
How to get your press release noticed by search engines..
A cheap and easy website evaluation tool
How's your website doing? If you're among the ranks of the incredibly web-savvy, you can probably answer that question with a mind-blowing array of details about your search engine rankings, visitation rates, average time visitors spend on each page and the number of other sites connected to you. If you are among this “web-elite”, you have no doubt learned to leverage a multitude of free programs on the web to help you determine the effectiveness of your website or you program these tools yourself.
So what if you want greater visibility for your website, but you’re not a web search guru? I found a great site that puts together a very thorough report about how effect your website is versus your competitors. It is called http://www.websitegrader.com/ and of course, it is free. Well, almost free. You have to give them your email address (however, you will not receive any spam as long as you do not opt in). The report you’ll get details your web pages that are not downloading well, the effectiveness of your metadata, headings, and images, your search engine rankings, and other sites connected to you. Plus, you’ll get a bunch of suggestions to make some minor changes to your site in order to get a big lift in your rankings.
As I said, there are other similar tools like this available on the web. I've just found http://www.websitegrader.com/ to be the simplest. Tell your customers about this site too.