Social Media | Fruition Interactive :: Toronto Internet Online Marketing Company

Your Website Is Not Important

July 28, 2010 By Mitch Fanning 1 Comment

I’m always looking to improve any web site (media property) I own, contribute to, represent, or help bring to life. I’m mainly referring of course to [fruitioninteractive.com] and [mitchellfanning.com].

I’m consistently tweaking and fiddling with these sites in an effort to optimize results. At the same time, however, I’m keenly aware these sites are not as important to you. It’s not your morning destination. It’s not the place you go to first thing to see “what’s new.”

I’m okay with that.

Why?

Mainly because, I’d rather be hanging out where my audience “is” (and so should you).

So where do people hang out? I’m glad you asked.

Search Engines

No doubt about it, the minute someone hears something about you (or meets you in person) and want to know more, the first place they go is to their favorite search engine to see, exactly, what your story is.

The point.

There is a digital footprint that represents you and your business on every major search engine. The first page of search results is your “brand” and the way the world sees you.

Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is.

Here’s the deal…much of what determines ranking position of your web site (in a search engine) is now mainly due to what happens off the page, in the form of links from other sites, which brings me to my next point.

Social Networks

Consider this fact.

People now wake up and check their Facebook and/or Twitter streams (usually on their smartphones) to get a handle on what’s happening in the world.

More importantly, social networks are where your audience hangs out. It also happens to be an effective way to attract links and increase your search engine rankings.

Put simply: If your content isn’t good enough to attract good, natural links (via authoritative sites like Facebook and Twitter), it doesn’t matter how “optimized” the content is on your web site.

The Lesson

Spending time improving your web properties is fine. Just make sure you’re also hanging out where your audience is and stay focused on ensuring your brand is being properly maintained on those online channels.

So, where do you hang out online?

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning is the VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive. He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100. At any given moment, Mitch can be brainstorming ideas for a client, writing for blogs he contributes to, or resting under a tree in a quiet vineyard with @treatqueendiva.

Photo credit: mandyxclear

Filed Under: Interactive Strategy, SEO / SEM, Social Media

Online Video: Keep It Fun, Simple, and Entertaining

July 22, 2010 By Mitch Fanning 1 Comment

It’s no secret online video is effective.

The reason is clear: video simply engages people in a way that static text and images cannot. There are dozens of studies (and recent examples) that show the power of video to boost customer interaction, encourage viral sharing, and build brand awareness.

One only has to go back a week ago to realize this fact. So, in honour of Isaiah Mustafa (The Old Spice Guy), here are my two all-time online video campaigns:

Enjoy!

The Old Spice Guy

Despite all the recent backlash, I’ve enjoyed this campaign from the beginning (disclosure: I happen to use Old Spice ).

After two days and an incredible 185 personal responses to fan queries on Old Spice‘s YouTube channel, actor Isaiah Mustafa signed off last Wednesday in what could be the most successful social media experiment to date.

The ‘real-time’ brand assault made Old Spice’s YouTube channel the most-viewed channel of the day and the fourth-most subscribed to date at the video sharing site and garnered an avalanche of awestruck media praise and sites including Mashable, Reddit, and Digg.

Update [7/28/2010]: Since posting this article, according to Mashable, Old Spice body wash sales have increased 107% in the past month in part thanks to this social media marketing campaign.

Will It Blend?

Small home appliance maker Blendtec’s first “Will it Blend” video featured a man in a lab coat turning a handful of glass marbles into dust using one of the company’s home blenders. That video has received million of views since it was put online in 2006.

The videos have certainly gotten a little more flashy since their debute, but the idea is essentially still the same simple formula: blender + common object (that you wouldn’t normally put in a blender) = viral video hit.

The Lesson

Why have these videos worked so well and had so much staying power? In no small part, it’s because they kept it fun, simple, and entertaining. Stodgy sales pitches don’t work on the web, but short, goofy, wacky, and unexpected almost always does.

How can you start using online video to make a real connection with your audience?

This is Mitch, on a horse…signing off

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning is the VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive. He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100. At any given moment, Mitch can be brainstorming ideas for a client, writing for various blogs he contributes to, or resting under a tree in a quiet vineyard with @treatqueendiva.

Filed Under: Online Advertising, Social Media Tagged With: old spice guy, will it blend

The Old Spice Man backlash has started. Is it justified?

July 21, 2010 By Kent Wakely 1 Comment

So the Old Spice Man backlash has begun.

Time (speaking of brands that could use an update), is calling the campaign a #fail because sales have reportedly dropped by 7% (comparing June 09/10 to the previous year. The blogosphere’s piling on, too, with BNet and Jezebel taking a few kicks at the Man Your Man Could Smell Like (and I don’t know about you, but I get ALL of my marketing advice from Jezebel).

So how could this be? The Man has had over 12 million YouTube views and counting, they’ve had thousands of people participate in their interactive video push, they’ve had more positive earned media mentions than anyone other than their PR agency can count. By every “soft” category of measurement — exposure, engagement, influence — Old Spice Man has been a HUGE success.

So why isn’t that translating into hard ROI?

Jezebel has a theory — it’s about gender (surprise) — and the industry is starting to play this as a repeat of the old “great creative doesn’t get results” story.

I’ve got another theory: the numbers are bullshit (for now).

Leaving aside the fact that the sales data exclude WalMart, let’s look at the time period. Years ending June 2009 vs June 2010.

Old Spice Man launched in February of 2010, so on the surface it makes sense that you should see some lift in the units sold data for year ending June 2010.

But The Man didn’t really start to go viral until May/June of this year (at least that’s when I first saw him, and I don’t think I’m THAT far out of the loop)[correction: i just looked it up -- I first saw The Man in February, although it feels a lot more recent than that]. And Proctor and Gamble (Old Spice’s parent company) didn’t make their REAL viral push — with their “get a custom message from the Old Spice Man” thing — until mid-July.

Last week I tweeted a link to 7 Social Media Lessons you can Learn form the Old Spice Man. Here’s the 8th lesson: social media marketing takes time.

It takes time to build relationships. It takes time for the people that know, like and trust you to develop the intention to become your customers. Heck, it takes time to run out of body wash and to need to go buy more.

Social media marketing isn’t a campaign. It isn’t something that you can flip a switch on and see lift from next week. It’s a process. A process that’s built on long-term awareness and engagement.

Old Spice Man is building that engagement, so I’m not ready to write him off yet.

Filed Under: Branding, Interactive Strategy, Social Media

Is JustCoz.org the REAL Influence Project?

July 19, 2010 By Kent Wakely 1 Comment

Last week I wrote about the negative buzz that Fast Comany created with their Influence Project (nope, not feeding them another link) and the backlash from actual prominent influencers.

To quickly recap: with the Influence Project, FC is asking people to sign up to receive a personalized link to the FC Web site. Particpants send the link to their circle and ask them to click on the link. Each click counts as a vote, the most clicks wins “Most Influential Person Online” and gets on the cover of Fast Company. Critics, myself included, dismissed the project as a vapid attempt to milk people’s egos in order to generate more clicks (and therefore more revenue) and more links ( and therefore higher page rank and therefore more long term clicks) for the publisher.

It was the utter meaninglessness of the whole exercise that really got under people’s skin.

I think I’ve fou d the antidote or at least a really cool alternative way to leverage your online influence AND create some meaning in the world. It’s called JustCoz.org.

Co-founded byJeff Pulver, whose mega-resume includes co-founding VOiP pioneer Vonage, JustCoz.org asks participants to use their influence to spread the word for a cause or charity of their choosing throughout their community.

Here’s how it works:

Cause-based organizations — they need to be using Twitter as part of their communication strategy — register with JustCoz and create a listing to be posted to the JustCoz.org Web site.

Would-be influencers register with the site and choose a cause from the listings. From there, JustCoz.org manages the day-to-day mechanics of retweeting one message a day from the cause to your Twitter account.

It’s simple, it’s sweet. And best of all it’s a meaningful way to use your influence online. I think that’s worth a magazine cover.

Filed Under: Interactive Strategy, Non-profits, Social Media

Are you waiting for the Big Moment?

July 14, 2010 By Mitch Fanning 1 Comment

Many people spend their entire lives yearning for the Big Moment.

It’s like actors who only live for the Academy Awards, athletes who are obsessed with winning the gold medal, politicians who lust after the highest office.

Others want the perfect mate, the dream house, the Big Payday, and now thanks to the Fast Company Influence Project (Sorry, I’m not going to link to it) to be 2010’s Most Influential Person Online.

Individuals who have participated in this project seem to believe that if they obtain this title something magical will happen that will completely transform their lives. Once this “Big Moment” happens they’ll be better off. They’ll be influential.

Influence is not achieved this way.

Cultivating influence is a slow process. It takes time. Sure, you can make quick decisions, see fast results, optimize, and change things on the fly. However, real influence just takes time. You can’t start a blog and gain influence right away. It takes time to create content, find your voice, develop a community, and earn respect and trust.

You create influence by inspiring and enriching the lives of others. Influence comes from teaching others. By having meaningful conversations that educate based on the content you create online (text, audio, video, images). People then consume your content, comment on it, Digg it, share it, and encourage others to take part.

But more importantly, they’re better off (not you).

Instead of asking people to “click on your influence link” (courtesy of Fast Company), create something useful. Anything. Write a blog post, record one more podcast, produce a video. Visit someone’s web site / blog and tell them you appreciate their insights.

In other words, do what influential people do.

Create something great. Put in the time and commitment to providing your target audience with a unique experience. Listen to online conversations. Hang back and just listen to the flow of conversations. Then, when you’re ready, start adding value and push the conversation forward.

Influence isn’t a “project”. It’s not achieved in some magical “Big Moment”. Influence is created on a daily basis and lies in the smallest of moments, events, activities, interactions, and situations.

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning recently became VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive. He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brand (NBC.com, Nestle) to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100, creating, selling, implementing both traditional and digital marketing opt-in strategies.

Inspired by the post What happens when you fake authenticity by Kent Wakely

Photo credit: Fod Tzellos

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Fast Company Influence Project

What happens when you fake authenticity

July 12, 2010 By Kent Wakely 3 Comments

There are a couple of keys to social media success that we talk about a lot here. Consistency. Engagement. Relevance.

But none has such tragicomic effects when it’s ignored as Authenticity — and it’s amazing how many smart people try to fake it.

Take for instance, the recent case of Fast Company, the Website and magazine that “help a new breed of leader work smarter and more effectively” by “uncovering best and ‘next’ practices”.

Fast Company has enjoyed a pretty good reputation among people where the spheres of business, entrepreneurship and technology intersect. The magazine was born amid the dotcom boom of the late 90s and has lived to tell the tale.

But last Monday, they launched something called the Influence Project, an attempt, in their words to “find the most influential person online”. Which sounds — and actually could be — great.

But within hours, FC was being called out for running a link-baiting pyramid scheme — running a scam — by exactly the kind of influencers they were trying to reach and leverage.

The crux of the problem was the way the project was structured. Would-be influencers were asked to register for the project and then they were given a link to send to their friends and colleagues to click on. And, well… that’s it.

Powerful influencers felt that they were being asked to pimp out their reputations in order to drive traffic and boost search rankings for FC — they felt that FC wasn’t being transparent about what their goals were and they felt that if they were going to be asked to use their influence it should be towards something more meaningful than this trivial thing.

They felt that Fast Company was being inauthentic about their goals for the project and was asking them to compromise their own authenticity. And the word spread like wildfire.

The stunt has generated buzz for FC and they have some notable defenders, like Guy Kawasaki, but the consensus among most influencers is well summed up by Oliver Blanchard commenting on the Conversation Agent blog:

I dug Fast Company a lot more back in the day. I still like it now, a lot, but I don’t love it like I used to. Great writing is one thing, but relevance comes from understanding the subjects you write about (or turn into projects) thoroughly. Fast Company’s relevance just took another hit with this, and that makes me sad.

It makes me sad, too.

Filed Under: Interactive Strategy, Social Media

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