Emergence of the Digital Consumer

IBM just released its Media Study and guess what? The emergence of the digital consumer is happening a lot faster than originally predicted. According to the survey, several trends have emerged:

1. Consumers are accelerating their adoption of new distribution formats. Participation on Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, etc. is soaring.

2. There's an obvious shift in advertising spending. Most marketers expect to increase interactive/online marketing spend while 65% expect to decrease traditional advertising.

3. Shift to “Brands-Actional” Advertising. Advertisers can focus on ROI-driven and brand marketing simultaneously.

4. Agencies Can’t Meet Demand. 80% of advertising industry participants interviewed for the study expect the industry to be at least five years away from being able to deliver true cross-platform advertising.

If you're a PR or Marketing professional, you MUST learn how to take advantage of social media and online opportunities because this is where the money will be in the very, very near future.

Where smart companies are spending their money today

I read this article this morning, Where do Marketers Spend their Money during a Downturn, and it states something readers of my blog are already aware of: Smart companies are cutting traditional media (advertising, tv, radio), and putting their money into infrastructure and technology to enable social media, email campaigns, online promotions, search engine marketing, and mobile marketing.

Why the move away from traditional advertising? Online marketing activities allow for customer behavior tracking and concrete metrics. We've even seen a shift in PR from clips to clicks -- what is your target audience reading, posting and blogging about you ONLINE??

What's in your marketing plan? If social media, search engine marketing and online activities aren't a major part of your plan, it's time to follow the leaders and reconstruct your marketing plan for a very different economy.

Death to the Yellow Pages

Let's talk about dentists and social media. What?? Yeah, keep reading. It gets better.

So, back in the old days, how'd you find a dentist? Why, you went to the only one in town! Times, changed, towns turned into cities, more dentists, how'd you know which one to go to? You looked in the phone book and/or checked your insurance book.

Times changed. There are thousands of listings for dentists in your area; you're not even sure if they are dentists; You no longer have dental insurance, etc. You turn to your co-workers and friends -- on Facebook.

Yep, I just witnessed the most awesome dental referral and social media yesterday. A friend of mine asked on Facebook if anyone knew of a good dentist in Lakeland. Several of her friends began responding. Within minutes, she had not only names but phone numbers and addresses for several dentists in the area, complete with cute stories ("I've known Dr. Brown since I was a toddler...").

You know how Facebook works... her friends responded, and being one of her friends, I could see the responses. When I responded, MY friends could see her post and actually, they too could have posted. What happens is all of the sudden, hundreds of people can "help out" via Facebook. Do you think she looked in the phonebook when all was said and done, or do you think she took her list of 9 dentists and sought more information for her particular needs? You got it... the latter.

How cool is social media? For a whole lot of dentists in Lakeland, pretty dang cool for the free pub they got yesterday!

Strategize your New Media

OMG! Can you believe I'm posting something to my blog two days in a row?? Is this a fad or have I turned over a new leaf??? Only time will tell!

After reflecting on the questions I received after yesterday's presentation on New Media for the contemporary PR professional, I thought I'd talk a bit about PLANNING your online strategy.

No longer is it enough of an online presence to have a website. Now, you have blogs to watch, participate in and host. You have RSS feeds to publish. You have message boards to host, monitor and respond to. You have social media to contend with too -- facebook and twitter. While it's cool to reach your target audiences online, couldn't you just spend endless hours on this stuff?

The way to make sure you are covering your online presence appropriately is through one word -- PLANNING. Yep, my PR friends, just like what you're supposed to do with your traditional PR campaigns -- make a plan first.

And guess what? It's not much different from your traditional PR planning -- think RPIE!! But before I dive into that, set your objectives. Why are you engaging in new media? What do you hope to gain from it? You shouldn't do it to do it... you need to have a measurable goal in mind.

Research -- where is your audience online? Are they on facebook? Myspace? Twitter? Blogs, message boards? Industry sites??? Find out.... Then, watch and listen. Decide Where is the best place to be online to reach my audience. Ask your known audience (clients/donors) about their online habits -- what keywords they used to find you, what sites they frequent (that are relative), etc. You want to find people just like them.

Planning -- Once you've done some research, decide which sites you are going to spend your time on. Then, make a plan for each (Update Twitter once a day; Update Facebook twice a day, etc.). Decide on some topics in advance of what you're going to focus on in these posts. You can always participate in and respond to topics your audience is bringing up but have a plan for when things are quiet. Is it national take your pet to work week and you sell pet food? Would be a good topic.... This phase should answer Who - What - Where - When - and How.... (we already know why)

Implementation -- get to it. This is the part where you will actually execute the strategies and tasks you identified.

Evaluation -- how are you going to know it works? Think about ways you will evaluate this plan. If you wrote out your objectives, you will know what you need to prove. If you can't prove it, better change your objective to be something you can measure!

Not sure you can do it? Call me and I'll write a strategy for you and then you can implement it in house. Yeah, I know, I don't come cheap but then again, is wasting your time cheap?

What good is a blog if you don't post anything?

So, I talked about blogs this morning in a speech to PR professionals at the FPRA Polk County chapter and it dawned on me, I violate all of the good rules of blogging!

First of all, and most importantly, you need to stay up to date. If you peruse my blog, you'll see, I haven't done that. In fact, I didn't post a single item in 2008. That's not cool and no one will think my blog is very important.

Speaking of which, the next rule of a good blog is relevance! SAY something important to at least someone, besides yourself of course. I'm thinking that as people go to download today's presentation, they'll look at this blog and shoot, I'd better have something relevant to say! Since we talked about new media this morning, why the heck not discuss it further in this blog?

Don't get me wrong -- I have plenty of things to say, and I say them. I like to write and I write a lot. I just can't remember the log in and password to this blog to get it all down for others to read!

Lastly, a good blog is short and to the point so I will end this blog with that!