How Much of Your Audience is Fake?

How Much of Your Audience is Fake? from Bloomberg Business is a mandatory read for anyone involved in digital marketing and advertising. When the uncomfortable questions start being asked from your clients or managers, you need to know the answers.

Top Social Channels Used by SMBs For Advertising and Promotion

Link: Top Social Channels Used by SMBs For Advertising and Promotion

Is Marketing Branding?

Often I talk with clients about the connection between branding and marketing. Almost all the time, there is a great deal of confusion. I bet you, reading this, are a little confused.

This article, Where Marketing Ends, Branding Begins from Kiss Metrics, is a very good, easy to understand overview.

What do most people get wrong?

Misconception #1: Branding is marketing / advertising / promotion / anything to that effect.
Misconception #2: You are the ultimate authority when it comes to your brand.
Misconception #3: There exists a formula for success when it comes to branding.

Do yourself a favor and read the rest of the post...

Honeycomb Consulting is Two Years Old!

Honeycomb Consulting is Two Years Old!

Two years ago this month I went online to incorporate a new enterprise called Honeycomb Consulting. I had high hopes that I would be able to bring value to a range of clients, but I remembered the statistics that most companies fail within a year or two.

There are always shifting fortunes during the run of any business, but I can look back over the past 24 months and see that I've been blessed to work with some great companies on interesting projects...

Some highlights...

- Working with a mobile video app company, Priveo (www.priveo.me), supporting their initial product launch with a new website, videos, lead generation and PR outreach

- Built a public relations campaign for wireless innovator Solid (www.solid.com), resulting in increased trade and analyst coverage (NY Times, Tech Crunch, InformationWeek, RCR Wireless)

- Developed an event based thought leadership campaign with client Lyceum (www.lyceum.com), a payroll and HR systems provider, based on the issues facing small businesses as they attempt to comply with the regulations stemming from the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

- Constructed content marketing program for travel risk management company, iJET (www.ijet.com), that included graphic design, collateral development, and public relations outreach

- Helped systems management company LANDesk (www.landesk.com) develop their social media program and worked with them booking third party experts, including press and analysts, to be interviewed on their blog.

A big thank you to everyone who put their faith in Honeycomb!

If you would like to receive a detailed presentation about these engagements, just let me know and we'll schedule a time to chat.

Or, if you like to learn more about Honeycomb, have a chat about your marketing needs, visit our website, send me an email or just call me at 202-497-8333

Interview with Matt Langan- Social Media and Content Marketing

Last week, I interviewed marketing consultant Matt Langan on the Straight to the Point podcast series. Matt is the CEO of L&R Communications and is also the editor-in-chief of GotGeoInt.com, the nations preeminent geospatial intelligence blog.  

Two years ago, as social media was starting to be adopted by marketers targeting the government customer, Matt and I had a great discussion about how companies needed to adopt a more aggressive content marketing approach in order to successfully grow their government business.


What has changed since then? Did our predictions turn out to be accurate? 

You can listen to the podcast here: Interview with Matt Langan

What did we cover?

• How the slow economic recovery is influencing marketing budgets?
• Are marketing executives rotating funds into social media and content marketing?
• How important is social media to achieving marketing objectives now? 
• How important is mobile marketing to the marketing mix? 
• What marketing trends do you see that are going to impact the industry most over the next few years?

Compelling Content is the New Advertising

As more and more companies adopt and incorporate social media into their overall marketing structure, understanding of what makes social media marketing effective is spreading. Back in the day, most companies would consider the "social media box" checked if they found a young, college graduate to set up a Twitter account. Now, a more sophisticated, strategic approach is being rolled out in many places...

We at Strategic have always said that creating and aggregating compelling, value added content was one of the keys to successfully building and engaging with a targeted audience. You company has just as much right to a computer screen as the New York Times, but if your content stinks, guess who is going to get the traffic. Your content has to be the Three E's: engaging, education and entertaining. And it has to be distributed to the right folks in the appropriate way. Tweeting your latest press release is a waste of time.

More and more people are getting on board with this approach. Check out this latest post from Copyblogger, "3 Steps to Foolish Online Advertising" (I highly suggest reading the whole thing...)

Remember this first and foremost – educate first and foremost. Give people something they can use, and they’re primed for more value. And that’s exactly what the Motley Fool report does.
While delivering on its promise and providing value, it becomes clear that this information is just the tip of the iceberg, and clearer that deeper analysis is valuable and worth paying for. That’s the natural point to make an offer – when people have been educated enough to do business with you.

Do You Have to Pay for Advertising?

Absolutely not. We’ve been preaching for almost five years that compelling content is the new advertising, thanks to the fact that compelling content spreads for free via social media.
People actually want content.

Compelling content is the new advertising. Compelling content is the new marketing. Compelling content is the new...everything.

Facebook, Richard Clarke, and Kids Today

I'm catching up on a lot of blog posts, videos and news that happened while I was away (see my post on Alaska). I think it is important to take time off once in a while mainly as it gives you a fresh set of eyes on your industry and it trends. Here are a couple of links I'm finding compelling today...

The reviews are coming in for "The Social Network" by Aaron Sorkin about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sounds like its a good movie and going to be a big hit. Here is a roundup of reviews so far...

Levis is putting its $100 million dollar advertising account up for review. The goal?

According to people familiar with the situation, the review is an effort by the marketer to consolidate the nearly 20 media agencies it works with around the world to one or two agencies.

Is this consolidation a one-off event or evidence of a general trend? My guess is the latter.

In interesting talk by Richard Clark on the keys to cyber security



More M&A transactions that spotlight the importance of marketing dashboards powered by sophisticated analytical engines. "IBM to acquire analytics provider Netezza"

Should alcohol ads be allowed in college newspapers? The kids at UVA and Virginia Tech sure think so. They are suing the State of Virginia in order to overturn a ban...and the Supreme Court is looking at the case. How would you feel if your biggest possible advertiser was prohibited from buying space in your publication? Does Jagermeister really need to advertise in order to convince their best customers to have a shot tonight?

Marvin Gaye Commercial

I've was watching the Olympics last night and saw a commercial from Nike featuring Marvin Gaye singing the National Anthem. It's a spectacular version and I blogged about it earlier in the year after seeing it referenced on a Twitter feed.

Here is the link to my earlier post that has the full length version: http://majka.blogspot.com/2008/04/marvin-gaye-sings-national-anthem.html

Check out the the video and tell me that's not the best version of the national anthem ever.

Here is the Nike Version:




Anyway, it occurred to me that the advertising agency and/or Nike must have come across this video in the same way I did, via social media and only then decided to make a commercial around it. It would be very interesting to learn how the creative ad types sourced their idea- an interesting case study on the impact of social media and the long tail.

What do you think?

Social Networks- Good PR?

The question of PR versus advertising has been around for a long time. Al Ries wrote a book entitled, "The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR", that describes how PR is better suited to marketing today's products and services. Nowadays, the growth of cheap (land line and mobile) broadband combined with free, easy to use simple CMS software like weblogs, wikis and social networks has empowered users, customers, prospects, and critics to organize themselves on their own terms.

Nothing new about that.

So I chuckled when I read in BizReport about WPP's results from social networking for their customers (emphasis mine).

WPP found that more of their clients were interested in keeping consumers updated on company changes, events and specials and that social networking sites were a good way to do this. However, advertising on social networks was not as popular, leading the company to deduce that social networks are helping businesses but in a different way than originally thought.

From the beginning, many businesses have been interested in creating branded micro-sites within social networks. What this trend report indicates is that this is a good way to connect with a user-base, to introduce new products or to keep consumers updated on sales or company events.

To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To ad agency, everything looks like a opportunity to sell ads.

Measuring Influence

I found this post by Roy Young on MarketingProfs (How Many Are You Reaching and Who Are They?) that I found interesting. I talk with a lot of marketing professionals about public relations. Often, the subject of measurement or benchmarks arises. Most often, the discussion revolves around traditional PR output like releases, case studies, placements and analyst reports. However, I always tie a proposed PR campaign to a company's sales goals, profitability target or overall valuation.

To me, whether or not you achieve the business case is the only true measurement of the effectiveness of a public relations campaign. Anything else smacks of insider navel gazing.

Now, marketers have spent a lot of time quantifying paid media for good reason. It's much easier to generate good data for a media buy or a direct mail campaign. It's easier to make a direct connection between one's actions and the movement of the needle. Certainly, one of driving forces behind the massive investment in online advertising over the past few years, has been the huge reams of data it generates.

However, as the online advertising machine bumps up against user generated communities, it becomes harder to draw a cause-effect relationship. As Roy says,

...for emerging media, you may have to be satisfied with qualitative measures of impact. At least for now. After all, if you have two readers of your blog, and those two readers have the first name of Steve (Balmer and Jobs), your blog may be far more influential than another blog on technology with thousands of readers.

Food for thought on a Monday morning!