Will Marlow - Filed under 'Blogs'

July 20, 2010

Why blogs are better than social networks for achieving marketing goals

In addition to writing this blog, I also have a large social media presence on Twitter and Google Buzz. Through a survey that I did awhile back, and through simple observation, I can say that my social media presence is responsible for driving a very large portion of my blog readership. (As a new blogger, and as a blogger who lacked a pre-existing subscriber base, social media platforms have been invaluable to me for finding readers and subscribers.)

The fact that social media is so great leads many people to ask: why do you need a blog at all? Aren't blogs just relics of the 1990s?

The answer is definitely 'No,' blogs are not at all displaced by social media tools. Here is how you should think about it:

Your blog is your house. Your social media platforms are the doors and pathways you use to lead people into your house. You can replace "blog" with website if you want, but in that case your website needs to be substantial and compelling enough to draw people in and keep them interested, otherwise you should get a blog to accomplish that.

The bottom line is this: my blog has gotten me a handful of speaking engagements, a handful of new business opportunities, and introductions to many, many interesting people. My social media platforms, on the other hand, have gotten me: blog subscribers. (Hint: I love it when people subscribe to my blog by email; click here to subscribe!)

I am exaggerating slightly to say that my social media platforms only introduce people to my blog, and that from there I interact with new people. I do interact with lots of people on social media platforms. And on some occasions I have made very interesting acquaintanceships only through a social media platform. But for the most part, none of the platforms allow you to engage with someone in a way that is as deep as it is on a blog. Why is that? Because blogging takes effort. Way more effort than creating a Twitter, Google Buzz, LinkedIn or Facebook account. And people respect effort. If you invest the time to create and customize and update a blog, that is a big statement about who you are, and what your priorities are. When people who share your values and priorities find your blog, it is a great opportunity to meet them.

This is why a blog, or another equally substantial online property, is the cornerstone of most successful social media marketing campaigns.

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Will Marlow is a digital strategist/online marketing consultant. He's the co-creator of AlumniFidelity, which is a Web 2.0 fundraising platform for colleges, nonprofits and secondary schools. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Bowling Green State University and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. He would love to help you market your business on the Internet, boost the fundraising numbers for your school or nonprofit, or sellout your next big event. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // Blogs Clean social media methodology blogging social networking

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January 5, 2010

Let Yourself Be Found (Flip the Switch)

Proctor & Gamble, currently the world’s 8th largest corporation and over 170 years old, was the first company to put a toll-free 1-800 number on all of its product packaging. The first year after doing so, it received 200,000 phone calls from customers offering ideas or complaints. P&G, with revenues of almost $80 billion in 2009, spends hundreds of millions of marketing dollars aimed at identifying and locating customers. But all it needed to do was flip a switch and suddenly 200,000 customers reversed the process and started finding P&G.

Nonprofits, schools, and companies are beginning to think of social media the same way. Just turn on the channel (with a blog, a Facebook profile, Twitter, YouTube, or a specialty service like AlumFi), and let your donors, volunteers, and customers find you. Take their messages seriously. Respond to them over the same social network with which they contacted you. You’ll have richer communications, better relationships with your base, and a better year overall than you would otherwise have had.

Will Marlow is the co-creator of AlumniFidelity, where he helps schools such as the University of Virginia, William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Bowling Green State University, as well as about 25 other schools and nonprofits, with online fundraising and marketing campaigns. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // Blogs Facebook Fundraising Marketing PR Social Media Twitter blogging e-Commerce

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January 3, 2010

The Ideal Journalist

I was having a discussion with a journalist the other day about what combination of skills/traits are desirable in a journalist today.

We came up with some interesting thoughts.

According to us, the ideal journalist (without the support of a staff) should:

1. Be a great photographer.
2. Be a great videographer.
3. Be very well-versed in Photoshop and Vegas, not to manipulate images, but to build mashups of photos and videos to supplement stories.
4. Be a near-daily blogger to keep the most loyal readers updated on what she's doing.
5. Be an active "Twitterer," Tweeting both her own stories and the stories she wishes she wrote (that is, for creation and curation).
6. Use "bit.ly" links to track how many people click on her stories, so she could talk about how many readers she brings with her to whichever company she writes for.
7. Use Google Analytics or some other tracking software in her blog so she understands which of her story formats were most popular and successful, and she improve her presentation over time.
8. Be comfortable responding to readers in comment fields all across the web, and would setup various alerts to notify her when a reader was talking to her or mentioning one of her stories.
9. Have an online bio where she lays out her modus operandi, her standards, her skills, her background, and what readers should expect of her.
10. Have good grammar.

Personally, I think the only journalists who will have any job security or steady work in the years to come will be those who have a strong personal connection to their most loyal readers. And to do that they need to understand how to produce stories that are optimized for the Web, not optimized for paper.

PS - If a journalist can do all this, and they manage to build a daily traffic of 2,500 unique visitors, a rough estimate for how much revenue they would get from advertising would be $60,000 a year. That would be cool, especially because if you're smart enough to build that level of traffic, you're probably smart enough to develop other streams of revenue to supplement it.

Will Marlow is the co-creator of AlumniFidelity, which helps schools and nonprofits improve their online fundraising results. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // Blog Blogs Media blogging journalism journalist newspapers

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January 1, 2010

Communicating in 2010

Many people focus on the content of their message. They refine and tweak and improve their message, and when they really nail it they may land an op-ed in the Washington Post, or their video may go viral, or some other great thing will happen to get them attention.

But the thing that seems to separate the most impressive modern communicators (people like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki and Apple and Google and Barack Obama) isn't the content of their message, it's their delivery. (And they don't use every social media platform or megaphone available. But the things they do, they do really well.) Obama maximizes his time in front of the teleprompter, Godin writes a great blog post every day, Guy Kawasaki Tweets 60 times an hour, Apple famously doesn't touch any social media at all, and like Google it has employee evangelists who each have their own style and portfolio.

For these people and companies, the messaging itself seems effortless. It's the delivery they work on.

Will Marlow is the co-creator of AlumniFidelity, which helps schools and nonprofits improve their online fundraising results. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // AlumniFidelity Blogs Communications Obama blogging

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