Topic: People | OBannons Leap

Archive for the ‘People’ Category

Using Social Media for Social Good

Monday, July 14th, 2008

I’ve commented here before about the fact that I’m one of “those people”, yep, a bleedin’ heart liberal.

I can’t help myself, I feel blessed in my life (after many years of not feeling so) and am compelled to try spreading the bliss where possible.

If you think about it, that’s partially the same motivations that were behind me starting this blog 2 years ago. I had helped some friends and family members start making money online (some as supplemental income and some have gone on to earn full-time incomes from it), and liked being able to help them to “get ahead” and started towards achieving their goals. This blog was just my idea for a path to doing that on a larger scale with others.

I’ve posted all of this here before, but I thought it was a good time to revisit the topic and maybe remind some fellow marketers (established or aspiring) that the methods we use to drive traffic and conversions to our sites and sales offerings work just as perfectly for sending traffic (and funding) to our favorite causes and charities–and everybody has a few seconds here or there to submit a social bookmark, submit an RSS feed or even spend a few minutes to make a blog posting for some organization or issue they feel passionately about.

Now, I could explain how from a business perspective this is 100% well-spent time with a potentially huge ROI; and give examples like how Roberta’s constant blog mentions and support for www.breastcancer.org has directly resulted in increased loyal customers of the women’s clothing site she makes those postings on… but I’d much rather that you take the initiative to use some of the tools, methods and techniques I talk about here to occasionally do some good for the causes you care about on your own.

But, just in-case you do need some incentive, let me remind you that online marketing isn’t about “hitting customers over the head with your message” any longer, it’s about having conversations and making connections.

Your online reputation is your company brand.

If people like and respect you they will want to interact and do business with you–and people tend to like and respect people who are truly compassionate, caring and giving. How’s that for incentive to do a little social networking for social good now and then? (even though I know you didn’t need any personal incentives)

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Technorati Tags: marketing, social good, social media

Tags: marketing, social good, social media
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I Love Retaggr

Friday, July 11th, 2008

It’s no secret that I’m big on social media and networking services. If you know me or my story then you know I come from a retail management background. I managed stores of all sizes, from high volume discounters (Phar-Mor before the crash) to smaller specialty chains like BlockBuster Video.

And much of what I learned about product merchandising and cross-reference marketing in those days has been the backbone of my success online.

Unlike many of my peers who hated the part of their jobs that included dealing with customer service and would have preferred to just keep shoppers moving like cattle, I loved that part of the job. Meeting people, talking with them, helping them. Even the day when a crazy lady spit soda all over my shirt in protest of Phar-Mor (I never did learn what exactly she was protesting), I was able to make friends and laugh about it with the cops who carried her away.

So of course I love all of the new online venues that are sound and useful for people to connect online. Not just because I like being social, but also because as a marketer there’s nothing (imho) better than direct connections with the people that are my potential clients. Getting personal insights into their needs, desires, behaviors… it’s a bottomless gold-mine if used (and never abused) wisely.

I’ve recently discovered Retaggr, one such service, and I’m really blown away by it. Basically, Retaggr acts as a hub for your online identity, and allows your online profile to become portable across blogs or other social sites.

With a Retaggr account, anytime you post a comment (or posting on your own blog), or place a tag (or get tagged) on an image of a Retaggr enabled site–your profile is automatically attached to it.

To see this in action, just click on that little blue info-bubble next to my name in this link: Scott Bannon

Now that I have a Retaggr profile, anytime I leave a comment on someone’s blog (if they’ve enabled their blog for Retaggr) that blue info-bubble will appear so that my profile is connected to my comments.

Also, anytime I might mention someone here in a post, if they have a Retaggr profile, it will be attached to their name so that readers can get a better ideo of who I’m talking about.

But what I really like is having the profiles attached to the comments I leave. I’m always reading other blogs, and the comments that get posted on them, and all the time I think “hey, that person had something interesting to say”, but because they didn’t add their URL (or don’t have a personal web site to add) to the comment I can’t see what else they have to say about other topics in other places. With a Retaggr profile though, I would be able to see where else that person is participating in discussions online and could then follow along or even join in. In other words, blog comments with Retaggr profiles aren’t anonymous or random in nature anymore.

And since blogs are the foundation of Web 2.0 and online social networking, the fact that Retaggr specifically targeted blogs and blog comments from the start as they have impresses the heck out of me.

There’s enough platforms online for connecting and conversing, too many now in-fact and the conversations are getting thin and disrupted because of it. Centralizing everything you’re involved in with a single profile account like this is a huge step (in my opinion) of pulling everything together in a more orderly–yet still extremely portable–fashion.

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Technorati Tags: networking, retaggr, social media

Tags: networking, retaggr, social media
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From With to At to With

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

I’ve created a new category just for this posting, though I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts to add later, called “People”–because people are it!

If I’m seeming abstract please indulge me for a moment and I promise to make myself clear.

In 1992 when I built my first website there was 1 goal, to show it to people. That hasn’t really changed much over the years, but how to do it has. Back then there was basically 1 way to show your web site to people, by talking with folks and telling them in conversations that it was there.

There were no search engines to care about (a few laughable-at-the-time directory attempts did exist) and online advertising was coveted but had yet to become organized into anything usable.

If you wanted visitors to your web site you had to talk with people either in person, or online in various chatting formats (BBS, chat rooms, irc and etc.) and say “hey, check out my web site”.

Then businesses became serious about advertising online (popups were born) and hired lots of Geeks out of the chat rooms to create elaborate systems for driving traffic with paid advertising, because business folk were far too important, I mean busy, to actually talk to people when they could just throw money around instead to get visitors to their sites.

And some of those chatting Geeks who weren’t offered corporate jobs took it upon themselves to create their own systems and models for driving traffic, this way they could cash in on the big bucks but not have to wear the suit coats and ties every day–and pseudo-search Pay Per Click was hatched; which ultimately led to what we know now as search engines.

It was all about who could control the message. If you controlled the message you controlled the traffic, and money (over technology) was able to control the message in those early years.

Fast forward to today and guess what, paying for traffic through popups, pop-unders, banners, Pay Per Click and search engines–by paying for search engines I of-course mean paying crazy amounts to experts who do things most of us can’t comprehend and they can’t (or won’t) explain to get our pages listed highly in the “natural” search results–well, this whole system is peeling away bit by bit because people don’t like being talked at and told what to like/do/look at/think/etc, and that’s what those systems do.

They impose their desired outcome on the individual rather than assist the individual in finding the best path for their unique needs.

Then along came that dubious Web 2.0

And suddenly people had choices, freedom like they’d never known to share, converse, analyze and rate…

And where does that bring us? Back to talking with one another again.

People, and conversations are what’s driving the web. Just like in the start, only with more bells and whistles; and this time I don’t think they’ll let that control go…

Not convinced that conversation drives the web? Have a look at the numbers in this slideshow presentation I recently saw: