Fame and Fortune Guaranteed

Don’t let any channel be in charge of your success.
That is your job.

As online social networking spaces continue to explode, it is becoming easier to build online collateral that some may mistake as a brand.

Since branding occurs between customers and is not created in a chemistry lab, your effort to give the appearance of expertise can only take you so far.


Do You Like Me Yet?

If you meet someone at a party and they press up against you and shove their business card and a pamphlet in your face, you would probably call security. But some feel comfortable jamming in-boxes with unsolicited sales pitches perhaps because of the appearance it may be easier than building another relationship.

Your quest for instant success,
may irreversibly hurt the brand you are trying to create.

As with many industries, some who are less than skilled claim to be experts. I was approached by a company recently who guaranteed they could help me market my company through social channels yet their online footprint was virtually nonexistent. Last week, there was promotional material floating around for an e-course and it read like it was written by a child.

Social media take a lot of time and even more commitment. The work is worth it but not if you are going to try it for a while and hope it does miracles for you. Other media or even an inflatable gorilla on your roof can't even promise that.

Limited Time Offer

You and your company are not a campaign. I don’t care how many followers you have and you don’t care how many friends I have if we can’t help each other get there.

Return on Investment has been a phrase uttered in business silos since we were trading rocks for rice and now with some people the phrase has been changed to return on now. Clients want chiselled in stone success guaranteed. I have been in media and marketing for twenty-six years, nothing is guaranteed.

What is certain is your ability to stick with it, monitor your results, review your organization for strengths and understand that you are building a business, not a Twitter following.

What are your thoughts?

knealemann
Create experiences not campaigns.

Rolling the Digital Dice

Abandoning Traditional Media

Your mind begins to wander as you dream about all the things you’ll buy when you win the jackpot. One roll and your dreams will come true. Money will be no object.

Now imagine you have a company or product. How will you get all you desire? Will you daydream about being wildly successful? Let it ride on one role and call it strategy?

Outbound Online Only

It seems simple enough to create a Facebook group, add a Twitter stream, start a blog and wait for the customers show up. You have the self-ringing phone so the new customer making web presence will do its magic in no time, right?

After all, we have seen the explosion of social media in the last 5-6 years (although social networking is as old as humans) with websites such as Twitter, Mashable, Huffington Post and YouTube which were built for the online experience. So it stands to reason you can do the same with your business, right? Easy peasy.

Paradigm Crushed

Take the time to build and you stand a better chance of permeating your message into the consciousness of users. Blast people and don't expect them to dance.

Some say social media doesn't work and it's a waste of time, others think it's the golden bullet, while others believe what they did last year will work again this year.

Who Me So-Me?

I often see stories about the death of traditional media. Print is in trouble, no one listens to radio anymore, billboards are ineffective, direct mail doesn't work, television is expensive and everyone has a PVR.

A bad idea on any medium remains a bad idea. Abandoning an integrated media approach in place of a digital-only strategy may result in a die in the wood, roll no good.

Or as my colleague Mitch Joel says - it's not 'instead of' it's 'in addition to'.

What's your roll?

knealemann
strategy. marketing. media.

image credit: evidentia