Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Author: Christopher S Penn

Make your social media experiment useful

In reading the latest “controversy” in social media about Burger King’s ad agency tweeting on behalf of the client and the furor over authenticity and transparency, I came to this conclusion:

Burger King needs a new agency.

If you haven’t been following along, here’s the very short summary. CP+B is the agency in question tweeting as the fictional King character for Burger King on Twitter. Some social media folks object to a lack of disclosure by the agency, a lack of authenticity.

Here’s a different perspective on the issue: ROI. What in the world was CP+B thinking? I’d love to see even a back of the envelope ROI argument for creating a Twitter account for a fictional character to sell sandwiches, which is the whole point of Burger King.

Forget about transparency, authenticity, and whether or not an agency should tweet as a client. What in the world is the ROI or even apparent value of this initiative?

Here’s how I would have handled a client’s request to be engaged on Twitter: create a Twitter bot that you can message with your current location. It returns the three nearest Burger Kings so that you can get something to EAT, since the whole point of Burger King is to provide something for me to eat. I’d use it in a heartbeat when I travel. If Burger King and CP+B approached Twitter or social media in general from the perspective of being USEFUL, they’d get more sales and a measurable ROI.

It’s absolutely true that you can’t get precise ROI on social media. My work for the Student Loan Network means that ROI gets fuzzy, but the business connections, enhanced distribution of things like eBooks, inbound links, and other measurable activities are all improved by Twitter and social media. Can I put an exact dollar amount on it? No. Can I say that Twitter has improved the bottom line? Yes. Have I helped folks on Twitter get financial aid questions answered? Yes.

Be useful in your social media experiments. Don’t just do something in social media because it’s what the cool kids are doing. Do something that is useful, that serves a need, and your social media experiment will be a success.

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January 16, 2009
Lots of eBooks lately…

I’ve been writing a lot of eBooks lately, it would seem. For those folks who are just getting to know me, I thought I’d summarize all the writing in one post so you could go and get the eBooks if you like. All of the eBooks are completely free of charge.

Financial Aid eBooks

Scholarship Search Secrets, Sixth Edition. This is the book I’m most proud of. It goes over how to use Google and other techniques online to find money for college. Of all the eBooks I’ve done, this one I think has made the most tangible difference in the lives of the people who have read it.

2009-2010 FAFSA Guide. The FAFSA eBook is for anyone and everyone having to fill out the latest FAFSA, which the government simplified by adding more questions and making existing questions more complex. Good job, Uncle Sam.

How to Find Cheap College Textbooks. A fun little eBook on various tools and shopping comparisons for the ever-overpriced college textbook.

How to Write a Killer Cover Letter. Take one part copy writing, one part sales, and one part experience as a recruiter and hiring manager, blend carefully, and you get an eBook about how to write a cover letter that doesn’t hit the circular file immediately.

Marketing eBooks

The Twitter Power Guide. Tired of the endless re-runs of “What is Twitter?”, I thought I’d kick it up a notch by creating an eBook of advanced things you can do with Twitter once you’re past the Twitter 101 stage.

Synchronizing Social Networks. Want to do even more with your social networking experiments? Want to preserve the progress you’ve already made and help keep your social media efforts future-proofed? This is the eBook for you.

8 Step Podcast Marketing Guide. Want to get your podcast off the ground? Here’s 8 things to think about and consider as you turn on the microphone.

Social Media Listening in 15 Minutes a Day. A short guide to help you start listening to social media outlets like blogs, podcasts, Twitter, news, and more in an effective, low-risk way. After reading it, you’ll be ready to kick off a social media listening initiative at no cost to you and see what’s important to you and how you market your company’s products or services.

If you enjoy these eBooks, let me know!

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January 15, 2009
The power of brand in a recession

In a period of growth, your brand is your sword, helping you open up new markets, boldly making an impression on consumers, reinforcing the emotional aftertaste of doing business with you for good or ill. Your brand is what you brandish against competitors, demonstrating with swiftness your strengths and the reasons others should do business with you. Obstacles like barriers to entry are slashed aside as word of mouth of your brand paves the way for progress.

In a period of recession, your brand is your shield, defending you against the onslaught of market forces. Your brand reminds consumers why they did business with you in the first place, the value of business with you versus a lower priced, potentially lower quality competitor. Your brand as shield provides some cover for you to reposition, to adjust, to realign on new terrain, to bide your time until opportunity becomes apparent and it’s time to wield the sword.

If you are skilled only with branding as a sword, then the forces of recession will toast you as surely as a dragon’s breath the moment the market turns.

If you are skilled only with branding as a shield, you’ll be left behind when others charge forward to opportunity and prosperity.

How do you put this to use?

Wield your brand as a sword by creating something worth talking about, giving customers experiences that amaze them. Solve their problems. Cut away obstacles to their success. Deliver what you promise plus a little bit more. Serve them in the truest sense of the phrase.

Wield your brand as a shield by never failing to deliver what you promise, by providing great service as a defensive play, by reminding customers in as many ways as possible why they’ve done business with you and why they should continue to do so. In marketing copy and sales talks, ask customers to recount their experiences to you as a way of self-reinforcing the good. (assuming you delivered on your promises)

This above all else, though: know when it is time to advance with sword in hand or hold your ground behind your shield.

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January 14, 2009
Social media as an agent of corporate change

Social media for business is unquestionably a hot topic in the current environment. Lots of folks want to know how it can help their business, make them some money, or reduce costs, and to a degree, social media can do all that. That said, a real stealth play for social media is using its shiny object status to effect change in an organization.

Consider Fizzcrank Corporation. It’s been doing okay for the past few years with traditional marketing, from brochures to trade shows, but it’s feeling a little stagnant. Products aren’t revving quite as quickly, and buyers aren’t buying Fizzcranks at the same levels they did two years ago. Bob the marketing manager has been wanting to do more field work to see what customers want, but management isn’t willing to step outside its comfort zone. What does Bob do?

Leverage the power of the shiny object! Bob brings shiny objects like Twitter, Google Reader, and Facebook to the table and says that for no money and just some time and effort, Fizzcrank Corporation can become a leader in the Fizzcrank industry. Management is bedazzled by the shiny objects and says that as long as the no money part is true, Bob can do whatever he wants with social media. The CMO gets all excited and has a press release written (that is ignored) to announce Fizzcrank Corporation’s thought leadership in the Fizzcrank vertical.

Now the real work begins – Bob sets up his listening post tools, tying Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a bunch of other networks together. (see my Twitter eBook for more details on how) He sets up monitoring for keywords, starts listening for Fizzcrank in global searches, and before long finds out that customers would really like to be able to use a Overcharged Capacitor with their Fizzcrank. Bob takes the idea back to the engineering gnomes who inform him that matching up an Overcharged Capacitor with a Fizzcrank is not only simple, but a really good idea, and Fizzcrank OC is born.

Fast forward three months. Fizzcrank Corporation now dominates the Fizzcrank industry with Fizzcrank OC. Products are selling better than ever, and Bob now talks to customers regularly. Management is happy with profits. Bob is happy to be talking to real people instead of writing press releases and billboards. Customers are happy because Fizzcrank is creating products they actually need and want.

The lesson in this fictional account is that social media can be a way to introduce a cultural change in your company, away from broadcast marketing and toward listening to what your customers are saying. If you work at a company that has not developed a culture of listening, see if you can use social media as a stealth play to begin the practice – after all, your customers likely know better than you do exactly what they want out of your products or services.

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January 13, 2009
Do you have a Twitter Plan B?

I was prepping for a presentation at College of the Holy Cross and noticed that Twitter had, at least for posting updates, ground to a halt this morning. There are a lot of folks in the social media space positioning themselves as Twitter experts, Twitter consultants, Twitter this or thats, and that’s cool.

Here’s the part I wonder about: what’s your plan B? Suppose the outage had lasted all day? All week? Suppose Twitter ran out of VC money entirely and had to shut down? What’s your plan B? Twitter isn’t like email, where you can just slap up another SMTP server and the mail keeps flowing – if Twitter goes down, everything tied to it goes down.

If you’re positioning Twitter to clients, what do you tell them Plan B is?

If Twitter is essential to your business or marketing communications (or your clients), do you have any way of establishing contact with those folks who follow you, or does your business shut down when Twitter shuts down?

Food for thought.

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January 9, 2009
Three words for 2009: Unleash your potential

Recently, my friend Chris Brogan asked what three words would define 2009’s goals and achievements. Mine come directly from one of my teachers, Stephen K. Hayes, and his Quest organization – unleash your potential. In the context of his To-Shin Do martial art, it’s about awakening a lot of things in yourself that you don’t know are there.

For me, outside of the martial arts, unleashing your potential is about tapping into the powers you already have. In a social media presentation I give at speaking events, I ask audiences to name a superhero based on this list of powers:

– Nearly omniscient
– Can influence events and things from afar
– Can see all over the world

The answer, of course, is you, with the help of Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the myriad other utilities available to us that give us as human being unprecedented capabilities.

The catch is, even though we have the capabilities, we may not be using them. We may be leaving potential on the table, and that means leaving money, friendship, love, and many other things on the table as well. Truthfully, we all leave potential on the table every day because life is just that good – there’s so much to explore, learn, and share that we’ll never get to even a fraction of it all in one human lifetime. That said, it’s at least worth trying.

So here’s an exercise to help you unleash a little more of your potential today, right now. If you’re involved in the social media scene and you have followers/fans/friends, pick someone in your contact list/address book/follower collection that you don’t know well and take 15 minutes to learn more about them. Find out what they do for work, find out what they do for fun. This is unleashing the potential a little bit more out of your personal network, exploring resources that you may not have known were there.

Once you’ve done that exercise, start looking around for more ideas and ways to get more juice out of the potential that surrounds you, that you have free access to. What can you learn to do a little bit better today? Who can you know a little bit better today?

Unleash your potential, and by the time 2009 draws to a close, you’ll have had an amazing year no matter what.

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January 4, 2009
Simple stir fry

I twittered briefly about a fast, easy dinner I was making. Suddenly a whole bunch of people wanted to know how to make it too. Here’s how.

1. Make some spaghetti, enough for 1 person for a reasonable meal. Doesn’t matter what kind, just make sure it’s washed and cool/cold. Leftover plain spaghetti works best.

2. In a large frying pan, as large as you can have, put 1 diced onion, 5 diced stalks of celery, 4 tbsp oil, and salt to taste. Crank up the heat as high as it will go. Do NOT cover.

3. When the vegetables show signs of browning/burning a bit, pull the pan off and put the veggies in a very large bowl.

4. Put 2 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp minced garlic in a pan. Melt the butter on low heat, then crank it to get the garlic to brown.

5. Throw the pasta in. Be careful of oil splatters.

6. Toss 2 tbsp soy sauce on the pasta after you throw it in. Toss quickly, then let sit on high, high heat for 3-5 minutes or until pasta browns.

7. Take pasta off heat and throw in the bowl.

8. Scramble an egg in the pan with the residual oil.

9. Throw the egg in the bowl.

10. Stir for a minute or two, and you have a stir fry!

The secret to a good stir fry is a large pan with surface area to spare and high, high heat. Don’t be shy – fire up the afterburner.

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January 2, 2009
New Year's Resolute

A funny thing happens when a new year starts. For many of us, we craft these resolutions, these goals for the new year, as a way of making a fresh start to the year. Here’s a few tips to make those goals stick.

1. They have to be achievable.

2. They have to be measurable.

3. They have to be atomic. By this, I mean they have to have pieces and steps. It’s not enough say you want to lose 25 pounds – you want to lose a pound every week, or some granular measurement that tells you whether you’re on track or not.

But here’s the most important tip for new year’s resolutions – you have to be resolute about them, absolutely firm in your convictions about achieving them. Being resolute isn’t easy; it helps greatly to have two emotional driving forces to power it. You have to really, really, really want something that you can define in very concrete, emotional terms, and you have to really, really, really want to get away from something in the same kind of terms. Let’s look at some examples.

Bad resolution:

I want to lose weight this year.

Good resolution:

I want to lose 25 pounds this year.

Great resolution:

I want to lose 25 pounds this year at 3 pounds a month, or roughly one every couple of weeks.

Almost certainly going to happen resolution:

I want to lose 25 pounds this year at 3 pounds a month, or roughly one every couple of weeks so that I stop feeling ashamed of myself first thing in the morning in the mirror and so I can hang out with my athletic friends on Monday nights at the club and attract Samantha’s attention for a date.

See how each resolution gets more and more specific, with more and more concrete ways to measure your success and give you reasons to do it?

Do the same with your resolutions. One thing that seems to help a lot of people is to write a resolution down, perhaps on a sheet of paper or plank of wood, and carry it with you. Make sure your resolution has these emotional ties to it so that it’s there as almost a totem for when you stand the possibility of going seriously off track. If you can carry it around somehow, you should.

I wish you not only a happy new year, but a year filled with achievements and accomplishments. Thanks for being part of my life.

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January 1, 2009
The year of the ox ahead

Hat tip to Stephen K. Hayes’ Densho and the Tsubaki Jinja shrine for this stirring description of what 2009 may hold for us all:

HEISEI 21/TSUCHINOTO/USHI DOSHI/KYUSHI KASEI meaning the 21st year of the Heisei reign of current Emperor, 6th of the Ji-Kan 10 Celestial Stems Inner Aspect of Earth, Year of the Ox and a Nine Purple Fire Ki Year.

Year of the Ox, Signifies leadership, strength, power and stability. As for Kyushi Kasei it is the 9th number of the cycle of 9. It is situated in the south position which is at the top or head of the 9-star compass so it implies mental development and intelligence. 9 is the highest number compared to 1. Its color is purple which implies high rank. It is common sense that happiness visits the family who treasures life, ancestors and Kami. It is the sun above your head at noon and implies vigorous ki, especially mental ki. In terms of fortune it is the time to make a plan, to sow, to fertilize and to prepare for the future.

This has the makings of a very exciting, very promising year ahead.

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December 30, 2008
Twitter Power Guide eBook

If you’ve been hankering for some power tips to use with Twitter that go beyond the basics, be sure to check out my new Twitter Power Guide eBook over at the Financial Aid Podcast.

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December 26, 2008

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