The internet has been buzzing about the new SEC guidelines and regulations regarding blogs, that’s right blogs.  It appears that blogs are going to be recognized as official public disclosure mediums, meaning instead of a company having to write a fancy press release and sending it out to the world, a company will now be able to post the news on their corporate blog!

Here is a snippet from the excellent article on techcrunch written by Brian Solis.

“In a speech yesterday, SEC special counsel Kim McManus outlined new guidance the SEC is about to give companies on when they can use their Websites, including blogs, to disclose material information. What this means is that we can now finally kill the press release, at least in its current form.”

Check out the full article on techcrunch.

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(photo was taken from a small yogurt shop in Santa Cruz)

When I say critics I mean customers, users, clients, bloggers, etc. I mean anyone that uses your product or your service; how are you getting feedback from them? If you offer a product or service to people but then are not getting good or bad feedback, it is difficult to evaluate success, satisfaction, and company direction. Your users would love to talk to you and tell you what they love and hate about your product, let them! That way you know what you need to improve upon or what you should leave alone. There are many ways to get feedback from your users:

• Comments from blogs
• E-mails directly to management
• Surveys
• Phone calls with clients (or users/etc.)
• Meetings with clients (or users/etc.)
• Twitter replies or direct messages

The list can go on and on, virtually any social media platform can become a method of getting feedback from your “critics.” Feedback is probably one of the most valuable things for a company and should be encouraged, especially from the loyal users and enthusiasts. Look at the Apple fans. Year after year they demand and ask for things from Apple and most of the time they get it, because they are very vocal about what they want and Apple encourages and listens to user feedback. This is probably one of the greatest reasons that has contributed to Apple’s success. If Apple didn’t encourage and get feedback, how would they what features to build into their products? How would they know what they need to improve on? How would they know what the users expect? The answer is they wouldn’t. Don’t underestimate the importance of feedback and make sure to ask and encourage it whenever and wherever possible. Make it EASY for people to give feedback, if you ask for feedback and make users go through a 5 step process, then you might as well not bother.

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Just found out there was an earthquake in southern california measuring 5.8.  At first I wasn’t quite sure what was going on and I couldn’t find much information on the web, so I turned to twitter.  Within a few seconds of asking around I received responses with links to information about the earthquake. 

I was also able to check Summize to find out what was going on.  Sure enough twitter was buzzing with news regarding the recent earthquake.

Within a few seconds I was able to confirm the earthquake and find out exactly where the epicenter was.  I quickly called my family to make sure everything was ok and was even able to fill them in on the magnitutde and epicenter info.  Personally I found twitter to be quite useful in this situation as I was able to quickly get the information I needed.

Just one example of how twitter can be useful

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Those of you familiar with advertising may be familiar with the rule of 3. This rule states that in order for a consumer to actively think about purchasing your product or service you have to hit them with the advertisement 3 different times. For example if a company wants to sell you something they should send you an email, a direct mail letter and give you a phone call. This is just an example, but you get the point. This “rule” has been around quite some time and I think we need to re-examine its effectiveness.

The rule of 3 has been in existence pre-internet but I question its modern day utility. Let’s think about this for a moment. The overall attention span of humans is decreasing, meaning we are all getting a more and more ADD with how we perceive and interact with information. We don’t have the time to sit and watch ads anymore, we want things instantly and we want it our way, and we don’t get it, we hit the “back” or the “delete” button. So knowing this, do you think that marketers should spend their time trying to show you MORE ads? There has been a large backlash against telemarketers, spammers, blog pitchers, etc. for precisely this reason, people do not want to be spammed and people do not want to see more ads.

There are a couple of things that can happen. Either the rule of 3 will turn into the rule of 33, meaning that marketers are really going to have to bombard and spam the hell out of people in order to get their attention (and really irritate them). OR instead, the rule of 3 will switch from a metric of quantity to a metric of quality and relevancy. Instead of concentrating on how many times marketers need to advertise to someone to get their attention, marketers need to focus on the relevancy and the quality of those ads.

We can all see that our attention is diminishing we don’t want to be bombarded with ads and we don’t want to be spammed, so what is the solution? Focus on relevancy, it is far more effective to show someone 1 relevant ad than it is to show non-relevant ads in larger quantity. Of course we could combine the concepts and show more relevant ads, but remember over time marketers will reach a point of diminishing return, meaning that just because you show more relevant ads doesn’t mean you are going to get more purchases. There is a balance between relevancy and respecting your consumers. Show consumers relevant ads, but don’t bombard them. If you are tired of seeing ads, so are your consumers.

What do you think about the rule of 3? Do you find it effective or not?

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I recently saw the film Atonement, the story of little girl who sees something she doesn’t understand. By not understanding what she saw and reporting it to authorities she effectively ruins the lives of a couple. As she grows up she realizes the mistake she made.

Now I know this may sound a bit funny at first but just stay with me on this. The scenario above reminded me of how large (and even small/medium) companies approach social media. The problem with the approach that a lot of companies take towards social media is that they do not understand it. A large company will usually make a weak attempt at a social media campaign and will then chastise social media for being a useless tool. Then, later on down the road, the company will grow up and realize that social media is not just a fad and not just a useless tool. The company will realize the mistake they made by not joining in the conversation.

In my opinion the problem with a lot of modern marketers is that they just aren’t being clever. I mean take a look at all the social media channels we have available, Involver, Facebook, Youtube, etc. Most marketers today believe that all of you have to do to succeed is upload content to one of these sites and then sit back and relax. (buzzer sound) WRONG! Picking the platform to use is only a very small portion of the battle. The real strategy comes from how you utilize the social media platforms to market. How can you use the social media channels to engage with the users and not just push content at them? For example, companies try putting up videos on youtube in hopes of driving traffic to product pages, the marketer upload the video and then says “youtube sucks we aren’t getting any traffic.” Well, essentially what the marketer has done is…nothing. Uploading a video isn’t marketing. Engaging the user is marketing.

Anyone have any good examples of clever marketing? Did I miss something here?

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