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Overcoming Apathy with No Money
Continuing with National Volunteer Week, I’m inspired by a recently posted video on TED by Dave Meslin on Apathy. Dave highlighted what causes Apathy in communities. Namely, it’s not easy for people to figure out how to get involved!
While some of the challenges he highlighted are systematic, others have simple solutions. The private sector has one thing over the public sector: $$$$$ at their disposal. So, the private sector can buy creative talents, buy space, buy media even. However, there is one thing the public sector has in abundance: Passion.
Here are a few simple thoughts:
Ad: Think like a big advertiser. Know what message you want to deliver. Create your marketing materials accordingly. Note message is singular, not plural. In an ad, you have limited time to get their attention. So, hit them with the most intrigue message, and let them seek you out to find the rest. (Yes, include a website or some way for them to follow up with you.)
Space: Pound the pavement. Create an awesome flyer and distribute in the neighborhood. Get what space you can.
Media: Do you know how often news articles are simply reprint of carefully crafted press releases? You can do the same. You can write press releases, keep in mind what are the important messages. Send it to your local newspaper and there is a chance you would get printed. Local newspaper is struggling to find a voice in this age where people read their news online. Localization is what’s going to save newspapers. With that in mind, don’t forget digital media. Digital media give everyone access to a national audience. You own website can host a variety of information. Just make sure the information is organized so it’s easily found. Yes, this is the website that should go on the ad / flyer.
That’s what the pros call integrated marketing campaign. You may not have $$. But you have talents from volunteers that can yield results far better than money can buy.
Numbers behind Facebook
Some calls marketing an art. However, if you’re in the business of marketing. You’re very much into the science of marketing. At the end of the day, your accountant only cares about your numbers. Social media is no exception. As the industry matures, more numbers are becoming available. Today, we’ll look at some from the newly released report Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review by Buddy Media. In this report, Buddy Media analyzed “Likes” and comment data from over 200 clients for a period of two weeks. Here are some numbers you may find interesting:
- Posts 80 characters or less in length have 27% higher engagement rates
- Engagement rates are 3 times higher for posts that used a full-length URL
- Brands that post outside of business hours had 20% higher engagement rates
- While industry plays a role, overall, engagement rates on Thursday and Friday are 18% higher than other days of the week
- Posts that end with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate
This report reinforced some of the data we looked at from Dan Zarrella earlier this week. Post when your audience have time to engage will likely increase the success of your post.
Another interesting data from this report was around what to post to increase engagement. Questions are always good conversation starters. However, many brands also leverage Facebook to promote their offers. In these cases, this report suggests that soft sell is the way to go. Words like “event” and “winner” are well received by fans. On the other hand, words like “coupon”, “exclusive”, even “free” are not the best words to use on Facebook.
Social media marketing and Facebook marketing remains to be a world of growth and opportunities. As more marketers are becoming active in this space, we will sure gain more insights into how to best leverage these new tools.
Facebook remains king of social media
Social media marketing, like all other form of marketing, is a blend of art and science. Throughout this week, we’ll be examining a few recently released report to look at the science side of this particular discipline. Today, we’re looking at Social Media Examiner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. This is their third annual report of this kind. This year, they surveyed 3300 marketers. Of those surveyed, an overwhelming 93% indicated that they were employing social media for marketing purposes. This shows that without a doubt, social media is part of mainstream marketing.
Despite that, not everyone has the same level of experience in social media marketing. Of those surveyed, half had less than 1 year of experience. Keeping that in mind, the data not only shows the state of the industry, but it also shows where the opportunities lie.
Social media is still in its infancy in being part of the marketing mix. Currently, social media is largely leveraged to gain general exposure and increase new users. The opportunity here is that social media has the potential to be an on-going engagement with existing users. As we all know, it’s far cheaper to keep a consumer than to try to gain a new one. So, social media still has a lot of room to grow.
Facebook by far is the most popular social media tool right now. It’s also interesting to note that there is a difference between B2B and B2C marketing. LinkedIn is far more popular with the B2B marketers. This makes sense because every marketing tactic is about targeting. LinkedIn is a forum where business professionals are already at, thus making it a perfect forum for B2B marketers.
Of all the different tactics, YouTube / Video was the top area of focus, with 77% surveyed indicated that they intend to increase their efforts. This likely highlights the growth in adjacent technologies, namely smartphones.
This was followed by Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, not so surprisingly. Nevertheless, traditional digital marketing remains to be an important tool. SEO and email marketing are both areas marketers intend to continue to increase focus on. This is natural if you think about it because people are searching online for information and it takes email addresses to sign up for social media tools!
However, traditional paper marketing is likely to continue to fall out of favor with marketers. Direct mail and print ads both are areas where over 10% of those surveyed intend to lower their investment…
Jeannie Chan is a Brand Manager for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. She considers herself a marketer, a traveler, and a foodie. Jeanne lives in NYC. 
