Five Key Things We Can Learn About Marketing And Social Media From Our New Brownlow Medialist

Winning Ways

The reality is that regardless of what arena we play in, there is a strong direct association between key success factors that are universally shared regardless of market, size or business age. The other night the games most exciting young talent Nat Fyfe won his first Brownlow Medal and again taught us all some key points that we should apply to our business marketing.

Stand Out From The Crowd

Differentiation is one of the most important core elements of marketing and despite this so few businesses actually do effectively differentiate themselves from the rest. In Nat's case: His unmistakable hair style and hair band uniquely mark him as a unique product offering like no other.

Be The Best At What You Do

Brand recognition aside, you need to do what ever you do better than the next guy and be able to consistently demonstrate your skill, knowledge and abilities to the marketplace. In Nat's case: He is an incomparable player with the mobility of a midfielder but with the marking skills and strength of a key position player.

Tell Your Story

One of the real opportunities in modern social media is the ability to effectively tell your story to explain who you are, how you come to be there and essentially through this process, try to more fully humanise the brand. In Nat's case: His speech after winning the medal was memorable in so many ways and gave us a real insight into this individual, his family and other key aspects of his life.

Being Real

Rarely if ever has the market place been so savvy as they are today and in so being able to spot disingenuous content a mile away with the reaction of not using that brand and often telling others about their thoughts. In Nat's case: There was an obvious authenticity to everything we heard from him through the night. Everything from the status of his injuries, fathers and brothers work and his feelings on winning a premiership.

Keep Working On Your Weaknesses

I have little doubt that the most underutilised tool in business is the SWOT analysis that effectively highlights both external market forces and internal strengths and weaknesses and through this presents each business with the opportunity to leverage their strengths and importantly, work to improve their relative areas of development. In Nat's case: Amazingly Fyfe did not go one or two or even three in the 2009 national draft but instead pick twenty.  Incredibly this means that every team passed on him before Freemantle eventually took him as an early second round pick. The embarrassed recruiting managers looking back say that at the time Nat was very slightly built and it was through also that he lacked the stamina to be become a regular midfielder.  Well they were wrong. Over his time in the league, he has developed these and every other area of his game to become the best player in A.F.L football.

So what about you and your business or brand. How can these five key factors be used to propel you to a higher level of performance and success. And if you'd like to learn more about marketing and social media visit our extensive range of nationally accredited courses at:
http://www.roadscholarstraining.com/services/accredited-courses.html

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Missed Business Opportunities. Not Understanding the Need for WITFM

Earlier today I found myself at Australia's and indeed the Southern Hemisphere's biggest and arguably best shopping center. Namely Chadstone Shopping Centre.  Well it may be large and certainly it does have plenty examples of businesses doing it really well, but sadly there are still many examples of businesses that just don't understand what business is really all about.

One specific example that has really made an impression on me is one that I can only call a colossal missed opportunity.  Specifically one retailer is as their window alerts us to, celebrating their tenth anniversary. Fantastic. Well done. But tell me that may be good for you but exactly what does that mean to me or any other potential customer walking by with money in our pockets. Very little I can assure you.

At the risk of sounding like a self centered, egocentric, hedonistic modern day consumer, what is in it for me (WITFM)?  In the famous words of Pauline Hansen: "Please explain". 

Especially in the current age of multimedia and social media marketing where it is possible to stage off line events and leverage them back to the various social media platforms, it seems an even bigger faux pas to have made.  Imagine if the business started with a well thought out set of tweets to raise awareness of a special event or group of events that would bring people in to celebrate an event at the physical retail store. 

At this point pictures, videos and even quotes could be obtained and put on Pinterest, You Tube and the businesses own blog to drive excitement, awareness and ultimately engagement and long term loyalty and profit.

Ten years old and still oh so much still to learn.



Until next time, good luck and good marketing, and for more great marketing tools please check out our website on:  www.roadscholarstraining.com


Regards,
Daniele.

New Facebook Email Addresses Now Available

In recent times Facebook has announced that it has updated the Facebook addresses on its site so that there is now greater consistency across the various functions of site.

As a result the address used to get to your personal timeline will be exactly the same as the one used t you email you on Facebook.

The updated addresses for people who had not already selected an email address on Facebook, whereas anyone who already had selected an email address on Facebook will not be affected.

If you want to pro-actively select an email address now you can also do so by going directly to: Facebook.com/username. ​

No doubt email continues to play and important and ongoing role that is complimentary to and supportive of all our social media efforts.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Despite Everything, Recent Study Shows that Email Still Ahead of Social Media

It seems incredible to think that in spite of the seemingly endless supply of daily updates and general hype around all things social media,email remains the more popular option of on-line personal communication, based on the results of the recent study by research firm Ipsos.

The study was based on research with almost 20 thousand adult respondents (19,216) and was conducted over 24 countries making it a truly international cohort.

The key finding of the research was that more people still used the net for email rather than social media (85% vs. 62%). Naturally within specific nations the percentage that used either email or social media platforms (formally defined as any blog, forum or social networking site).

Another interesting statistic of note, is that around one in six people (14%) also use Voice-Over-IP.(VOIP) and again shows a high degree of variability with Russia for example have a high level of usage with over 1 in 3 (36%) as compared to the US with only (6%)currently.

The major players in the social media space have attempts to transition people away from email to other forms of electronic note writing such as Google with its now defunct Google Wave, but have failed.

Not surprising really when you consider how fundamentally sound, practical and sustainable email is as an option for quick, universally available personal electronic, letter writing.

What about you. Which do you prefer and why?

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

New Twiitter URL Shortener Facility Now Operating

After a lot of waiting, Twitter has unveiled its new, automatic link shortening
facility.

AS we all know the main limitation of micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, has always been its maximum allowable 140 characters. Now you may argue that this is a bonus in that it forces you to be focused and succinct, but none the less it is a modest amount of words.

Therefore it will now be easier for Twitter users because this new update to Twitter will make it easier to share links with others they are tweeting.

Specifically Twitter has now announced that the new built-in link shortening capability will automatically shorten long URLs down to 19 characters.

This is highly significant when you consider that around 80 percent of Twitter's activity is done around people clicking on links.

In the past we have of course had other popular, link-shorteners like:
Bit.ly, TinyURL and Google URL, which also have provided users an additional benefit in link analytics, which at this stage Twitter’s URL shortener doesn't offer.

To use the service all you need to do is write your link as part of your tweet in the Tweet box and then press tweet.

I have no doubt that Twitter will match the analytics part quickly as well.
Anyway, what are you thoughts on this initiative. Do you think it will be a help for you? Let us know.

Until next time. Good luck and good marketing.
Daniele.