Will Marlow - Digital problem solving

March 19, 2010

How to avoid "chattering" in your social media strategy

The enemy of a good social media plan is chatter. Chatter is what gives ALL social media a bad name. For example, if a major nonprofit or school were to update their Twitter account with a Tweet that said, "Isn't it a beautiful day out?" That's borderline chatter, and I would never feel comfortable with that type of update.

But how do you make sure that each post or update advances your goals and avoids pointless chatter? The biggest problem that leads to chatter (and this is a problem that wrecks many social media campaigns) is that people don't know why they are using social media. If you don't know why you are blogging in the first place, you'll never keep it up (most corporate blogs are abandoned after just a handful of posts). If you don't know why you are on Twitter, pretty soon you'll be telling people about the weather.

Here's how you avoid chatter: identify the two or three of the highest value actions that you want to see on social media. This may be when a donor writes a positive letter and posts it on Facebook telling people how great you are. It may be when a customer posts a picture of herself at one of your events with a caption that says how wonderful your last event was. It may be when you post a video and two dozen people leave encouraging comments. Maybe it's when you see that 20% of your sales traffic is originating from Facebook from your special promotions. Whatever the actions are, you should know them, and you should always keep them in mind when you are thinking about your next post - chances are, this will keep your content far away from topics like the color of your socks.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // Facebook Social media marketing Social Media Plan Twitter

Comments [0]

March 18, 2010

Driving positive word of mouth online

I talk to a lot of people about how to make sure that the Internet is filled with positive stories about their organizations. Recently I was talking to a reporter who was writing a story about "Googlewashing," which is a term I don't like, because it implies that you are somehow removing negative stories from Google, and that's simply impossible (just ask any celebrity who has ever tried to remove a sex tape from the Internet).

I was quoted in the story that the reporter ended up writing, and in my quote I outline exactly the same strategy that I advise to most clients:

Don't think in terms of concealing negative stories - think in terms of promoting and generating positive stories.
Call the customers who are the most appreciative of you, and the ones you have the strongest connection to. Tell them how they can tell their friends about you (writing online reviews, leaving comments on your Facebook wall, etc.) These are activities that many of them will be more than happy to do for you.
Write your own regular blog, at least two or three times a week, telling your story (this is easier than it sounds for most organizations, because if you're providing a unique or high quality service, there are lots of stories you can tell).
Have someone audit the quality of the code of your website and web properties (like your blog, for example) to make sure that everything you're doing is search engine optimized.

If you do all of these things, you should be getting three or four positive customer reviews every week or month, and you'll make sure that if there's ever a bad review, on day one you'll already have positive reviews to balance things out. No one expects that any business will have positive interactions with 100% of customers, and a handful of negative reviews can even serve to validate the fact that your customer reviews are uncensored and legitimate. As long as most customers love you and are willing to talk about you, you don't need to worry about the very rare negative review. Certainly don't spend any time attempting to discover some secret, non-existent method of "Googlewashing." That's just time you'll have wasted that you could've spent interacting with customers who might end up producing a genuine, positive writeup.

You can read the full news story here.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // AlumniFidelity Search Engine Optimization Social Media Optimization Will Marlow quoted WOMMA Word of mouth word of mouth marketing

Comments [0]

March 15, 2010

My survey results

I wanted to share the results of the survey that many of you participated in a few weeks ago. Getting to hear real feedback from people is a very powerful thing, and if you run a blog I highly recommending including a periodic survey every now and then.

The results of my survey are as follows:

70.8% of you said you were very likely to recommend my blog to a friend. 20.8% said that they were only somewhat likely to recommend my blog to a friend, and 8.3% said that they were unlikely.
62.5% of you said that my posts were almost always interesting or useful. 29.2% said that only about half of my blog posts were interesting; and 8.3% said they were almost never any good.
The third question, which let readers tell me anything they wanted me to know about how I could improve the blog, yielded really interesting insights, such as that many of you want to see me responding to all comments on the blog, add more color to the layout, and possibly the most interesting comment was that many of you found me through Google Buzz, and you were just now getting to know the blog. (Some people also suggested specific topics/questions that you thought I should answer in a blog post, and I'll do my best to do posts on all of them eventually.)

Thanks so much for participating in the survey.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

March 11, 2010

When is paying for software better than getting it free?

There are lots of awesome free tools on the Internet. And since I feel like I'm always recommending that people use free tools whenever possible, I thought I would lay out the case for paying money for certain tools. In my opinion, you should pay for an online tool whenever:

The tool you need is unique and you have no other options;
or
You're also buying the resources and expertise of the company supplying the software.

If you feel the same way that I do about this, you can do a lot with free software, and then you can save your money for the tools that really make a difference. Just yesterday I saw this blog post about how Google will provide free email hosting to institutions with 50 or fewer employees. (That means you can have a gmail interface, but it could come from you@yourname.com. That's a cool free tool.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // free hosted email Free software Google Google Enterprise software hosted email Software

Comments [0]

March 9, 2010

Two quick tips for using shortened links with bit.ly

Two things are important in a URL shortening service: (1) you don't want the links to ever "expire" (unless you do want this to happen) and (2) you want the link shortening service to provide some amount of analytics.

This is why bit.ly is currently the standard free service for most people who shorten a lot of links. Anytime you shorten a longer link with bit.ly you get a whole list of analytic data to tell you how many people clicked on the links; what countries they were in when they clicked; how many people picked up your link and used it elsewhere, and a few other things. Also, you can take ANY bit.ly link you see anywhere and add a "+" sign to the end, and it'll show you all sorts of data, like in this image. (I suspect that some quasi-famous Twitterers and bloggers don't use bit.ly exactly for this reason: they don't want to let the world know that their influence isn't as vast as they think it should be.)

Here's another cool thing you can do with bit.ly: you can create a custom bit.ly link to help telegraph where the link goes. For example, a link to my blog could be "http://bit.ly/willmarl" instead of a bunch of messy random characters.

The need to use link shortening services like this is one reason why trust is so important in the online world. If you don't trust me, or you don't know me, then you have no way of knowing if I'm trying to conceal a malicious link behind a bit.ly mask. This is why it's important to post regular, relevant updates on your blog or social media feeds. Trust is something that accumulates over time, and as more and more people begin to trust you, that accumulated trust becomes validation for new visitors who are meeting you for the first time.

Leave a comment on this blog below.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [1]

March 8, 2010

I was quoted in this story about Toyota's social media strategy

I just noticed that I was quoted in this news article about Toyota's social media strategy. I was interviewed because of my background cofounding AlumniFidelity, which helps schools and nonprofits execute modern online fundraising campaigns, as well as for my former profession advising political candidates on their communication strategies. You can read the full story here. If you want me to send you updates like this, or to receive new blog posts by email, just subscribe by putting your email address in the field below and clicking "subscribe."

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // AlumniFidelity Toyota Toyota recall Will Marlow Will Marlow quoted

Comments [0]

March 8, 2010

Taking good pictures

Photography and videos are tremendously important for communicating on the Internet. Why? Because people do not want to read online. People consume information on the Internet primarily through videos and pictures, not written words. You can argue with me on this point all you want, but you're better off just accepting the fact that your message will reach more people if it's framed by pictures and videos. (If the New York Times needs to supplement its written words with pictures and videos, so do unknown bloggers and websites.)

This means that you would benefit tremendously if you equip yourself to take high quality, professional looking photographs on a regular basis.

Here's one of the biggest tips I can give you: often, the biggest difference between professional-looking photos and amateur photos comes down to the time of day. I was speaking with a veteran advertising producer who told me that he used to hate getting up at three in the morning to prepare for a photo shoot that had nothing at all to do with a sunrise, but the fact is, the quality of light two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset is magical on film. Those two two-hour chunks of time are when 80% of important outdoor movie scenes and magazine pieces are shot.

If you want your pictures or videos to look professional, the early bird still gets the worm.

Recommendations (and no, I don't make a dime if you click these links and buy these products): I typically recommend that brand new photographers buy a Nikon D40 (shown in the picture above), because it has a fantastic auto-mode, but it will also let you switch to manual to learn much more advanced techniques and grow as a photographer. And I used to recommend that people buy the Canon HV30, but I don't shoot videos for fun the way I take pictures for fun, so that recommendation may be out of date. However, the number one reason I recommended that particular video camera is that it has an external microphone receiver, which let's you easily replace the cruddy built-in microphone with a much higher quality microphone - it amazes me that most camcorders don't have the capability of accepting an external microphone.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // D40 Digital SLR Nikon Nikon D40 online communications Photography storytelling Videography Videos

Comments [3]

March 6, 2010

Don't make assumptions

When it comes to building a website or any type of software, it's important to make as few assumptions about how you think people will use your product as possible. (This is especially important if you want to be taken seriously by veteran software developers and Internet entrepreneurs, who are very big on the concept of split testing everything (read about that here).

But what do I mean when I say that you shouldn't make assumptions about user-behavior? Here's an example of funny user-behavior that I wouldn't have predicted, but that I learned about today. Apparently there is a not insignificant number of people out there who think that every link on the Internet requires a double-click - in other words, they treat all links as if they were icons on a desktop, and they rapidly click them two times whenever they want to use them. This is harmless behavior, of course, because it doesn't prevent anyone from accomplishing their goals on the Internet. But there is an nearly infinite number other behaviors, some of which are harmful, and if you tried to guess them all in advance you'd fail miserably.

Here is an example of a more harmful behavior. Google redesigned its Chrome Internet Browser because they noticed that a lot of people were attempting to type search terms into the URL field. With a normal browser, that would be a very frustrating experience. Rather than trying to educate those folks on how to use the browser properly, Google simply enhanced their browser so that people could type search terms into the URL field.

The point is, people will use your website the way that makes sense to them, not you. And if you listen to what they have to say, you can make your website a much nicer place to be.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // Software development Web development Website development

Comments [2]

March 5, 2010

About this blog

I write this blog in order to help non-technical people who want to understand technical things. I do this because in the last five years, the line that separates technical and nontechnical roles has blurred for lots of people. Take journalists for example. Journalists shouldn't just write a story anymore. They should write a story AND promote it online to make sure that even if they're fired from their newspaper, they'll have an online readership that may follow them to their next assignment. That's a valuable asset.

There are tremendous opportunities for non-techies to expand their horizons, and my goal with this blog is to seek out complex topics (like search engine optimization, website development, formulas for viral marketing, online fundraising, etc.) and make them understandable and useful. (To be sure, one of the ways I do that is by leaning on people who are a lot smarter than me.)

The following questions guide me as I decide what to post on this blog:

Would someone at a business, a university, a startup, a corporate marketing office, or a nonprofit potentially find this information useful?
Would I personally regret forgetting the information?
Has the topic already been covered elsewhere in a similar way?

I definitely want to hear what readers think, and periodically I may post a (very, very short) survey to get feedback on how I'm doing. But if I don't do a survey, you can still leave comments, send me an email, or connect on Google Buzz or Twitter.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // Blog blogging

Comments [0]

March 3, 2010

I want to hear from you

Now that this blog is five months old, and now that I written over 85 posts that seem to have been well received by readers, I would love to hear from YOU, my readers/subscribers, to give me some feedback on how I'm doing.

When I first started, I didn't know if anyone would be interested in reading my blog, and I'm sincerely grateful for each of you who stops by.

If you have a moment, I'd love to hear from you in this anonymous, three question survey. Please click the link below and let me hear from you.

Click here to take survey

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // Survey Will Marlow survey

Comments [1]