E-Book Sales Outpace Adoptors- Of Course

This is one of those geeky posts I do for my own pleasure in “stat busting”.  The words, Ebooks Now 23% of U.S. Publisher Sales  jumped out at me, like the unexpected movement of an errant fly as I scanned the headlines this morning. News about EBooks gets less breathless each year as “Ho-Hum” technology fights the glitter and glitz of the techy news media – but I believe there is something to think about here that will shape how we market to various consumer segments.

First the statistics busting- well not busting so much as replacing the breathless quote,

Interestingly, ebook revenues appear to be outpacing user adoption of the format, albeit only slightly. According to a study published by Pew last week, 21% of American adults have read an ebook in the past year.

Sometimes I hate the 24 hour news cycle that causes a writer in to include in an article or post that something is “interesting” because he or she doesn’t have time to research what it really is…which is expected. The Pew Study also showed that, like in most categories – heavy users read the majority of the books.  Ebooks are like a apps, not like tablets. So, yes, we would expect there to be a faster increase in the number of ebook sales than in the number of early adoptors of the technology.

That said, the next big trend that I see is children’s picture books finally moving in great numbers to the screen, as article after article talks about iPads and infants and the increased usage in the diaper crowd.

More about that next week.

Photo courtesy Karenturner via Flickr

Maryanne Conlin likes to crunch numbers on just about any social media platform, but as an early ebook adoptor – loves to geek around with numbers about books.

Measuring Social Media ROI- Not So Hard

Over and over I read about the challenges of measuring social media impact, which I find curious, not so much that it isn’t difficult but that so many companies implement social media programs before figuring out how to measure them.

There are a dizzying number of social media measurement tools on the market from high end suites like Radian6  to free tools like Socialmention, plus of course the analytics offered by every major platform (now including Pinterest). Data is not only available, it’s overwhelming.

Unfortunately, social media planning in too many companies has all the hallmarks of….wait for it…

Ready. Fire. Aim.

Sounds familiar? We’ve all been there. Too often marketing programs morph from internal discussions and end up in that weird space of a tactic in search of an objective.  In social media that seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

With all of the digital tools available to reach out to consumers online, it’s actually rather easy to measure a social media program, as long as objectives are in place first.

Let me give a few examples.

Do you want to drive traffic to an ecommerce site? Facebook ads have been shown to do that rather well.  Start your social media program with building up your Facebook presence. Identify your target fan and spend the time to engage with them. It takes some planning and a strategy document and some testing, but it is a better use of your social media dollars than a scattershot approach of a little bit on a lot of platforms.

Want to increase consumer awareness of your brand? Focus on influencers. Build up your Twitter following, reach out to influential bloggers. Build up your website content to drive consumers back again and again to see what’s new.

The list goes on of tactics that will meet any marketing goal.

But before you do any of the above – set objectives. Do you want to measure website visits? Are you looking for impressions? Use marketing metrics that you use for any other program – then develop the right social strategy to meet them.

It’s not so hard.

Maryanne Conlin likes likes to crunch numbers on just about any social media platform, but prefers to know what she is trying to find before she starts.

Is it Number or Length? Why Limiting Emails to 50 Words is Solving the Wrong Problem

Ex-Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, now that he has time on his hands apparently, came up with an idea that has caught the fancy of writers in the digital space, Why Limiting Emails to 50 Words Is a Great Idea.

I tend to disagree. In fact I believe the opposite. Reading emails is not an issue for me. Reading many, many emails is.

The whole argument for shorter emails, in fact, I believe will exacerbate the email problem. Let me give an example of, what seems like a weekly occurrence.  Colleague A wants to set up a meeting and sends me an email

Him: “ I like to schedule some time to talk to you about the Spring promotion. It’s really important that we get together to coordinate our plans”

Me: “O.K. when do you want to meet?”

Him: “I’m free next Thursday at 9:00 and 11:00”

Me: “I can’t meet on Thursday. But I free most of the rest of the week.”

Him: “ Next week is bad for me. How about the following week?”

Me: “I am wide open that week. How about 10:00 on Friday?”

Him: “ 10:00 doesn’t work for me, but I can do 11:00”

Me: “11:00 doesn’t work for me….”

This is not an atypical email exchange by any means.  On the contrary, what IS atypical is the well- organized email that may, gulp, exceed 50 words my fictional colleague may have sent out. Because, in fact, what is all too often likely to happen once we do actually meet is that…I am unprepared for the call because I don’t really know what the call is about….which leads to another round of emails to sort that out.

What my colleague could have said in his email is:

Him: “ I’d like to meet with you to discuss the Spring promotion. My team has planned to do the following”

We have a contract signed with celebrity Z that runs from the period May 1- November 30”.  She has agreed to allow us to use her name on Facebook and Twitter and will send out 3 tweets for us during that period. We have not talked to her about Pinterest, but she has a large following and may be interested in discussing that”.

We are also planning an in-store promotion that will have POS materials in several large chains? Would you have anything on the mobile side that will tie in with that?

We’re also planning an e-blast to go out during that period with an estimated 4MM impressions to our target demographic.  We wanted to tie back to the website. Do you have a microsite planned?

Let’s see if we can get together to discuss this next week. I am available all day Thursday, Wednesday at 9:00 and Friday morning. Do any of those times work for you?”

One email and hopefully just one email answering it from me.  But, this type of email just doesn’t exist anymore because…when we get an email this long, we don’t read it. You want to know why? Because we have 200 other emails in our in-boxes to read, so we’ve learned if we write a long email…no one will read it. A vicious cycle of unproductive work.

So I suggest we take a look at how we communicate via email, in the same way we’ve looked at how we do PowerPoint presentations. As we’ve  moved toward ridding our presentations of lines and lines of text and boiled it down to the most important information to communicate, let’s look at emails in the same manner.

The core answer to taming emails is the same – but the starting point is different. In presentations, we had to train ourselves to parse information. For emails we need to train ourselves to GIVE information. It doesn’t need to be lengthy and but it needs to be focused on imparting the most important information.

Until we get to that point, I will continue to follow my own personal email rule.  On the third exchange, I pick up the phone.

Getting Great Content – How To Build a Content Creation Strategy

I wrote my monthly column for Media Post Engage Moms today about creating content that moms will care about and want. You can read it here.

Creating Content that Connects

What inspired me was the voracious need for content that brands have and how great content drives engagement and ultimately sales.  In the typical manner, when a need hits the spotlight, brands are rushing willy-nilly to fill that void, sometimes at the expense of strategy and organization.

Let me give an example. Brand A embarks on a website redesign with a need for blog posts, video and some How-To’s or recipes. Brand A reaches out to everyone with a keyboard or camera and some skill in their network – bloggers, interns, employees, etc… and request content. Content of varying quality starts pouring in.

 

The streams of content, much of it time sensitive, gets uploaded to the website, blog, and social media channels haphazardly tagged and barely indexed. Some have typos. Content is written in a variety of different voices…only some of them the brand’s. Those closest to the brand struggle to take off their “sales person hat” in their writing. Very little of the content is repurposed.

 

Let me suggest a smarter way. Content development, like any marketing initiative should have a strategic focus. Take the time to develop a plan and execute it slowly. Great content written by professional content writers with the knowledge of keywords and some HTML (as mentioned in this great article) goes a long way. With an understanding of the value of backlinks, search, how to edit a video for YouTube, what photos work best on Intsagram and how to use consumer networks to promote a post, great content creators develop end product that can be used in a multitude of ways- on blog posts and Facebook, as pins and tweets and discussed and promoted through brand advocates. Higher quality content, executed flawlessly goes further…less is more.

 

Building a content program that includes all of the various types working together under one theme goes even further. I’ve found the greatest success for my clients working from an editorial calendar to develop video, photo and written content around a theme, then repurposing it in creative and interesting ways across social media network while integrating it into marketing plans.

 

The framework is the key, but not the end all, because speed and timeliness makes a difference too. Editorial calendars in the digital world need to be flexible and strategic opportunities need to be exploited, so while I advocate a framework, I encourage flexibility. A professional content creation program requires a bit of art and a bit of science and a long term goal. Doesn’t everything?

 

Maryanne Conlin draws on her years of blogging, posting, tweeting, shooting and editing experience to create great content for her clients and sometimes for herself.

 

How to Drive Engagement

91% engagement in the first 5 minutes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I grabbed this screenshot this morning after my usual early morning posting. How do you get numbers like these? Years of experience!

UPDATE: yes, of course – that number changed, but we consistently get engagement numbers twice the industry average for our clients!

 

Maryanne Conlin is CEO of RedRopes Digital and Partner Digital Strategy with 4GreenPs. She has been managing Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and communities for 6 years – almost a lifetime of experience!

Success and Fun with User Generated Content

UGC is such a techy sounding term for asking fans to send in what makes them love your brand. (UGC) User Generated Content, at its core is people sharing their personal stories.

Mashable’s story today on UGC, concentrated on fashion brands, with a CPG, feel good campaign thrown in as well, but some of the real opportunities are for food brands, though, most every B2C brand can benefit.

User generated content, is tapping into the vast number of users of your product and letting them share how they use it. Trust me, they’ll think of ways you never even considered!

Here’s an example of a program we ran on Pinterest for Avocados from Mexico to generate recipe ideas. I would have thought of avocado chiffon pie?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And consider The Pillsbury back-off – probably the first large scale example of UGC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key to a successful UGC campaign in the social world is 360 integration. Create your campaign. Be creative and integrate as many of your social sites into the program as possible. Have a sharing option on Instagram; enter through Facebook; encourage photos and video on Twitter.

User generated Content stretches your marketing budget, drives organic traffic to your website and engages your fans. Yes, there are a number of legal hurdles, easy to address once you know the ropes. And coming up with a creative idea in a noise filled social media space can be challenging, but reaching out to fans is an easy way to accomplish two goals at once – engagement and content – UGC-E?

 

Maryanne Conlin is CEO of RedRopes Digital and Partner Digital Strategy with 4GreenPs. She loves to create  content and read content that other people create.

Storytelling -Write Like a Fifth Grader

The very best storytellers draw you with evocative language and immediate imagery.  As pointed out at ‘Spinsucks” in today’s post though…it only starts there. In Three Steps to Business Storytelling, Gini Dietrich breaks down the framework of storytelling into:

Idea

Theme

Concept

Without this basic framework, as we all know, everything from blog posts to e-books begins to resemble a trail of breadcrumbs already half eaten by a flock of pesky sparrows.  As homework helper in chief though, I have to say, a dose of middle school English has made me a better writer by not only focusing me on those key points, but also by providing a way to take my writing to the next level.

It’s amazing what a rubric can do to improve your storytelling! While I think, as professionals in the business of writing, we all know how to break down a piece into main idea and supporting points. What we, at least I, don’t always do in any systematic way is review for what makes an essay a story – language!

Excerpted directly from a fifth grade rubric:

Sentence variation:  Does the story include a variety of compound sentences, independent clauses, appositive phrases and introductory adverbial and prepositional clauses?

Figurative language: Is there extensive use of similes, metaphors and personifications?

Word choice: Does the story include vivid and lively verbs? Imaginative and unusual adjectives? Too many vague or overused words?

The first time I used this rubric, I must admit, I had to review what exactly some of those words mean . I always get similes and metaphors mixed up; what exactly IS an adverbial clause?  But, the process, of course gets easier and admittedly more fun. And an essay becomes a story.

These days, rather than channeling my inner Irish, I draw on my inner English teacher. Though we prefer to believe otherwise…all the best storytellers do.

Maryanne Conlin is CEO of RedRopes Digital and Partner Digital Strategy with 4GreenPs. Though she prefers to believes she has an the Irish gift of gab, she finds finding and following the rules of effective writing probably has something to do with her writing ability.

CES Versus Aunt Amy

The past few days the news out of Las Vegas has crackled with the oohs and ahhs of techies getting their fix. Bright lights, warm days, cold nights and lots of walking sans subway or ANY available taxi.

For the rest of us, our days have been punctuated with breathless tweets, posts littered with capital letters and video with lots of background noise. Fortunately this 30,000 mile up view of the Consumer Electronics Show, obtained through repetitive searching on various platforms, tweeting, talking and texting with those actually at CES and a healthy dose of eye rolling, is exactly what we need to parse what the impact of all these gadgets on CPG businesses.

Seriously…what techies think is the coolest new gadget, might not be the one that consumers grab onto and make their own in a totally unexpected way. We won’t know that for a while. But we can get a head start this year because:

THIS holiday season was definitely a “gadget Christmas”, where adoption rates of new electronics soar and every home seems to have one brightly wrapped for a household member. This year, that gadget was the tablet.

In one of those great example of the complexities of the human brain, as we look at the latest, out of this world, new technology at CES, we can’t help but overlay the image of Aunt Amy stashing her iPad mini in her purse, Grandma dropping her tablet into kitchen drawer  and dad his Surface in the den under the remote….with the HDMI cord.

This opportunity for most of us to watch technology adoption close up, while peeking ahead to see what’s new…might just give us some insight on what really SHOULD be next… Just sayin’

Maryanne Conlin is CEO of RedRopes Digital and Partner Digital Strategy with 4GreenPs.  She has been to technology trade shows enough times to know that it’s good to reality-check the hype. She can often be found pestering family and friends and often complete strangers on  how they use tablets, smart phones and computers.

Image Strategy The New “To Do” in 2013

Happy New Year!

With New Year’s Day on a Tuesday, staggered returns to work seem to be the rule this year, which makes “3 Somethings for the New Year” posts rampant. So I’ll jump right in with my thoughts on 2013.

As noted in It’s Time For An Image Strategy, in social media, the image has become King. We’ve finally began to realize that a picture is worth 144 characters…or something like that. While it began to dawn on those of us who spend every day crafting content and pouring over analytics that posts, tweets, comments…you name it, perform better with a large juicy picture, the idea of an overall strategy is just beginning to take hold.

While getting great pictures, can at first seem frustrating, the sheer volume of user created content has made that less of an issue, with a little patience. The new demanding task is lining up the graphic with the message.

As we’ve learned, the key to an effective social media strategy, that extends from your website through all of your platforms is consistency. Develop a voice, create a series of messages, execute them in a variety of ways across channels.

Now add your images.

Turning that around and making images an integral part of your message strategy is the new task for 2013.

How do you plan to make that happen for your brand?

Maryanne Conlin is CEO of RedRopes Digital and Partner Digital Strategy with 4GreenPs.  She loves photos of good looking food and cute animals.

A Yummy Bi-lingual Campaign

It’s pretty awesome to see a write up on your work from a totally unexpected source! When I ran across this post A yummy bilingual social campaign and website, I Love Avocados / Amo Los Aguacates, I was happy to see our work for client, Avocados From Mexico highlighted by another agency. Thanks Content Hunting!

As noted in the article, we use two hashtags, one in English #Iloveavocados and one in Spanish #amolosaguacates and though not noticed by the author, we do both tweet and post on Facebook in both languages… though a lot more in English – reflecting the nature of the mostly 2^nd and 3^rd generation, English dominant, digital Latina.

Managing an effective digital campaign, requires looking at every piece of your digital program and integrating it into the program…times two if the campaign is bilingual! So, for Avocados From Mexico, each platform and each social media site gets in on the act on every promotion we run.

So nice to hear these words:

All in all, a very well managed campaign! And now I’m hungry…

Maryanne Conlin is CEO of RedRopes Digital and Partner Digital Strategy with 4GreenPs. Contact her today for information on building better digital campaigns!