I’m Luvvin’ It!!!

Let me tell you why you should be thrilled that I’m using CommentLuv Premium. I’m using this brilliant WordPress plugin so I can help YOU shine, and I hope you’ll soon see just how it can make your blog shine too.

You see, if you’ve known me at all over the last few years, you know my motto is, “You’ll never shine if you don’t glow”. I won’t get into the details right now of why that’s my motto, but I’ll tell you this. My goal over the years has been, and is still, to help you shine.

CommentLuv Premium helps me do that.

Comment Luv Premium gives me tons of control and lots of customization options that enable me to offer you the opportunity to showcase your content. The reason I’ve always been crazy about CommentLuv was that it gave everyone the opportunity to share their content with others in a meaningful way.

When people see the title of one of your posts next to your name when you comment, they see a fuller you. They no longer just see a name. They get a feel for who you are, and they can learn more about you by hovering over your CommentLuv card. Even better, they are very likely to click your link and head on over to your site to read your post.

I know what you’re thinking. CommentLuv did that anyway, so what’s the big deal about the Premium version? There’s tons of “big dealness” about it, but I’ll let you discover most of that yourself. I want to focus on one feature that makes it kick … well you know what I’m about to say.

Social Enticement

Social enticement. Let me repeat that. Roll it around your tongue for a moment. Social enticement.

When you use CommentLuv Premium, you can choose to give extra goodies to those people who give your post some social luv’in. What’s that all about?

If you choose, you can give all commenters the ability to display a post from a list of their last 10 posts. You can also give all commenters dofollow links. Or…

Or… you can give them all a choice of just ONE – their last post with the OPTION of letting them choose from their last 10 posts if they tweet, like, or plusone your post, as is shown in the screenshot below.

Think about that for a moment. You aren’t penalizing anyone. Everyone gets a little CommentLuv goodness. But those people who choose to give your post some extra social love, will get in return, some extra CommentLuv functionality.

Who wins?

• They win.
• You win.
• Everybody wins.

That’s the CommentLuv Premium feature I love the most. Yep, there’s plenty more to luv about CommentLuv Premium, but I’ll let you discover all those things on your own. Watch the video on the CommentLuv page to help you understand all the reasons it rocks.

Lots of reasons it rocks, but for me…social enticement is kick-badonkadonk! Yeah!

Get All The Info

Even if you decide not to get this plugin, I still recommend taking a look at all its features. Why? Because just knowing what is possible can spark some ideas in how you can be making your blog more enticing. So, go check it out and start thinking about how you could be enticing your users too. I bet it will be a light-bulb moment.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comment luv, Social Media Marketing
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Not long ago, I received an email from an employee of a social media marketing agency (Ivy Worldwide) that had just published a book, titled, “Social Media Judo“. I’d been contacted to see if I might be interested in reviewing the book or in speaking to one of the authors. I agreed to review the book, and received it in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It took me a little while to get around to reading it, but now I have, and I’d like to share some thoughts about it, and about the topic in general. The goal of this blog post is to discover lessons not only from the information within the book itself, but from the entire interaction which began with the email sent to me, and which ends not only with the publishing of this blog post, but beyond with your comments and interactions.

This is a long post (almost 2,600 words), but stick with me. I outline 5 specific lessons to be learned, and graded the book’s company/authors on each of the 5 as either succeeding or failing at that lesson. I can tell you right now they didn’t completely succeed. Follow along to see what they did right, where they fell short, and what takeaways we can extract from each.

The Lesson Within The Lesson

The book’s main goal is to help marketing departments of brands understand why they should embrace social media marketing, and how to effectively utilize it for maximum benefit to their brand. The email I received, inviting me to review the book, is one of the tenets that’s at the very core of what the book is all about, and it serves as a good place for me to start this discussion.

Let’s begin with the way the email was constructed. First of all, it began by addressing me by name, starting with “Dear Ms. Fontenot”. That’s a good start to getting my attention, although more will be needed, since of course, I do receive plenty of spam email from people who address me by name.

The first sentence of the email immediately let me know that a new book had just been announced, explained what it was about, and described who had written it. I was then informed that this wasn’t the standard “how to get more followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook”, but was instead a book that gives deep insights into how top brands were using social media successfully. That’s a good start in differentiating itself from the bland and banal items we run across our Twitter streams on a daily basis, so it succeeded in holding onto my interest.

The email then reinforced the fact that I wasn’t just on a spam list somewhere, but that the sender was familiar with me – at least a little. A relevant, previous post I’d written was mentioned and provided as the reason I’d been contacted.

Finally, the email reiterated the book’s central idea, and asked if I’d like a copy to review.

Now let’s see how this email is applicable to one of the central tenets of the book. On page 140, the section titled “A Personal Touch” begins, and on the next page, is this:

“In marketing through social media, we create personal relationships with the influencers, who in turn serve as gatekeepers to the millions of people we want to reach but don’t have the resources to contact on our own.”

The email to me was from a brand, who was reaching out to someone it identified as an influencer and a gatekeeper, as a step in reaching the influencer’s audience. Simply put, they reached out to me, with the hope that I’d now reach out to you.

This isn’t the same, of course, as a company buying influence. Sure, they sent the book to me free of charge, but I’ll in turn give it away to my local library later this week. This reaching out to me is, however, the essence of social media marketing, which embraces and understands that my opinion of the book is completely up to me. Will I be positive? Will I be negative? The authors have no way of knowing, but they trust in the process. On pages 76-77 is this:

“…we still get the same question every time we meet with a new company: “What if they say something bad about us? Listen: “They” already are, and they’re going to keep talking about you in both positive and negative ways, whether you join the conversation or not.”

In various other areas of the book, the authors stress that influencers can’t be told what to do, how to react, or what to say. And of course, I completely agree with that. The authors merely gave me the ability to talk about them, but didn’t attempt to control the message I might have about them. They simply opened up a conversation and had to trust in their product enough to let the conversation go wherever it might lead.

So, what did I learn just from the email I was sent? I learned that the authors practice what they preach, although I think they failed to completely adhere to what they preach in the book. They mention often that the personal relationship with influencers must begin before asking the influencer for anything. That didn’t happen here. I don’t particularly mind because it gives me a chance to show both the positive and the negative of a social media marketing attempt. We all learn best when we see both the successes and the failures of attempts that others have made. However, with that exception, I think the email was successful at “walking the walk”.

Success or Failure of the Email: Both, but more success than failure
Lesson: Find the influencers within your niche, reach out to them in a personal way, and allow them to interact with your product or service. This gives them the option to start a conversation about you – good or bad. If you believe in your product or service, then trust that the conversations will be more positive than negative, and never try to control it.

Lessons of Style

I mentioned earlier that we all learn best when we see the successes and failures of others, and that leads me directly into the style of the book. The style is focused on sharing actual experiences that the authors had with real brands. The entire book is structured around case studies. But before your eyes glaze over at the mention of the phrase “case studies”, let me assure you that the book isn’t filled with numbers and percentages and dollar amounts. Instead, it’s presented as clearly understandable stories.

Imagine sitting down and having a conversation over coffee with someone about how they handled a marketing campaign. That conversation would be far more interesting (to me, at least), than a Powerpoint presentation showing lots of numbers and charts and statistics that cause my mind to wander. So, for me, the style of the book was just right. I was able to visualize what worked and what didn’t by reading the case studies in a conversational manner. While a fact and number style might be called for on occasion, I think the story-telling format is much more effective – and much more persuasive – in most cases.

Success or Failure of Presentational Style: Success
Lesson: Make sure you present your marketing message in the style that will have the most effect and be the most persuasive.

Lesson in Analogy

Just because a book adapts the story-telling style, doesn’t necessarily mean it completely succeeds in delivering its message in a way that really connects with the reader, so let’s talk about how Social Media Judo handles that. Let’s begin with the title of the book. Why is it called Social Media Judo?

Throughout the book, the authors use Judo and its various moves as an analogy to show that social media marketing taps into the power of spreading a message via influencers – to ensure maximum outcome from minimum effort. This ability to achieve a maximum outcome from minimum effort is likened to the way that a judo expert taps into the momentum of his opponent, enabling him to easily throw his opponent to the ground. By using his opponent’s own energy, the judo expert is able to win with minimal effort on his part.

Each main point that the book makes is once again related back to the art and skill of judo, which gives the point an extra focus and clarity. Does it work to really clarify the points the authors hope to make? Mostly, yes. Occasionally, I found myself skimming over the finer points of the judo lesson, but overall, it was an effective way to help me really “get” what was being presented.

Success or Failure in Analogy: Success
Lesson: If you can find a way to relate the subject matter to another, in such a way that the points are clarified and made more understandable, do so. Relating the two makes a visual connection in the mind of your audience that usually results in greater clarity and a stronger bond with the message.

Lessons In Reach

What audience have the authors targeted, and will the book appeal to people at all levels of online marketing? The authors run a marketing company that often handles brand giants’ marketing campaigns, including such clients as Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, etc. The case studies in the book revolve around actual marketing campaigns that these types of brand giants ran, and discusses both the succesful and the unsuccesful campaigns. If I had to guess at the intended audience of the book, I would guess that it was aimed at the internal marketing departments of large, well-known brands who have marketing departments that are still stuck in the mindset of “controlling every aspect of the marketing message” and who are balking at the thought of giving up that control to venture into social media marketing.

Does the book successfully argue that social media must become an integral and vital part of a big brand’s marketing strategy? I believe it does. Through the use of the case studies that vividly show both the successes and failures of brand social media marketing campaigns, the book leads the audience to the final conclusion that it is an absolute necessity. It not only persuades the big brand marketers that they must engage in the medium, but shows, through example after example, what to do and what not to do, if they hope to run successful campaigns.

In light of their target market, did the authors succeed or fail in choosing me as an influencer that they should reach out to? On one hand, I think they might have failed in that choice. They mention several times in the book that it is important to find the right influencers. If they did their homework, they should have realized that my readers generally aren’t big brands. I serve small businesses and micro businesses most of the time.

Is this book right for a mom and pop business, or a solo entrepreneur? Not exactly, in that these small businesses don’t operate with the same large budgets that are evident in the case studies, but the messages in the book don’t totally exclude small businesses either. While I and many of my readers will never have the kinds of budgets that Microsoft or HP has to throw at a social media campaign, we can participate at our own levels. We can take the same lessons and apply them to our smaller networks and our own circles of influence. So while the authors of this book may have failed on one level by choosing me in their circle of influencers, they didn’t fail completely. I and my network can derive benefit from understanding the principles of the book, even if we have to implement them on a different scale. For that reason, I’d say they probably failed at finding the perfect influencer when they chose me, but it wasn’t a complete failure on their part either.

Success or Failure of Reach: Both, but probably more of a failure than a success
Lesson: A large part of succeeding with a social marketing plan is to ensure you are socializing with the right people in the right areas so that your reach is extended out to the people who will derive the most benefit from your product or service. Sharing the message with the wrong people is wasted effort.

Lesson in Sentiment

After considering the the technical merits of the book, it’s time to move to the emotional level. How do I feel about the book? What kind of emotional impact did it have on me? Am I glad that I took the time to read it, or do I feel like I wasted my time?

Obviously, the goal of the authors is to present information that readers will appreciate, and the goal of reaching out to me with that initial email was to hopefully have me spread the word about the book in a positive way. I can say that I believe they presented the right messages, in the right way, and succeeded in creating a book that will be useful in helping marketing personnel understand why social media marketing is essential, and how to best approach it. I’m not sure it would be the kind of book a mom and pop shop owner would enjoy reading, but I’d feel confident knowing that they’d appreciate what they learned, even if the subject matter isn’t within their usual style of reading material.

For the target audience, I’d say it will have a positive impact and is a must-read. For those of you who are small or solo businesses, it’s not a must-read. Nevertheless, I’d encourage you to read it if you really want to understand how to approach social media – as long as you can take the lessons from the book and scale them down. With that mindset while reading the book, I think you’ll make good use of your time. That, by the way, is my true sentiment about the book: It wasn’t a waste of my time, and since time is extremely valuable to me, that’s as positive a sentiment as I can give.

Success or Failure in Sentiment: Success
Lesson: Make sure your product or service delivers a positive experience. What more is there to say?

Final Thoughts

In some ways, this book is more about the why than the how. You won’t find a step by step how-to blueprint in this book, though there’s plenty of information that can help you determine how to manage a successful social media campaign. But for those who are afraid to venture into the world of social media, or are uncertain about its benefits, this book does a great job of explaining why you should and what benefits come with making that leap.

Valuable lessons can be learned by looking at the successes and failures of those who tried things before us. In this case, I not only learned lessons from the case studies presented within the book, but also from the marketing campaign that promoted the book itself.

Do you ever analyze what works and what doesn’t work for others, so you can apply the lessons learned to your own business? If so, share some of the lessons you learned or let me know what you think about the lessons I shared here.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Social Media Marketing
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Social Email Marketing

Integrating email marketing and social media

Join Brian Solis and other leading marketing experts, email companies and brands in a one-day conference to discuss innovations in integrated email and social media marketing. The fully interactive session include discussion panels, Q&A, presentations and case studies. Price includes refreshments, handbook with notes, networking drinks and access to the exhibition area.

When and Where

• Friday, September 17, 2010
• 9:00am – 5:30pm
• Hotel Nikko
• San Francisco, CA

Who Is Presenting?

• Brian Solis, FutureWorks (live via video)
• Kristin Hersant, Strongmail
• Dan Martell, Flowtown
• Chase McMichael, InfiniGraph
• Jennifer Neeley Lindsay, A-List Host, BlogTalkRadio
• Murray Newlands, Influence People
• Luke Brynley-Jones, Influence People
• Marissa Louie, HeroEx

What’s Covered

• Social Email Campaigns: What Works & What Doesn’t
• Using Social Media to Grow your Customer Base
• Rewards, Loyalty and Incentives
• Integrated Email & Social Media tools
• How Email Intelligence Enhance Social Media Engagement
• Innovations in Social CRM
• Tracking & Monitoring Social Email Campaigns
• How to use social media data to improve targeting and ROI

Things To Know

• Very limited number of early bird tickets left
• Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable
• Tickets cannot be bought on the day
• Group discounts possible
• Tickets can only be booked online with a credit or debit card. You do not need a Paypal or Google Checkout account to buy a ticket.

The Discount Code Is iem3

I won’t be able to attend, but if you do, I hope you fill me in on the experience. Enjoy and learn!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brian Solis, Chase McMichael, conference, Dan Martell, email marketing, event, Jennifer Neeley Lindsay, Kristin Hersant, Luke Brynley-Jones, Marissa Louie, Murray Newlands, San Francisco, social media, Social Media Marketing
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

5 Dominant Techniques in Social Media Marketing

Different companies with different goals should have different social media marketing techniques. This is a serious pain in the industry because social media marketing is something that truly works and can be very powerful, but most people (companies and consultants alike) have a lot of misconceptions regarding the different strategies and how they should be used.

>> Follow Yu-kai Chou

How Google sets goals and measures success

A while ago I wrote a post about the culture of “failure is not an option” and how, taken the wrong way, that actually conditions people to set modest achievable goals that they are certain they can achieve. Because if they fail … they are fired. Taking great risks, pushing innovation, and striving to achieve the impossible will never happen at companies like that. In that post I discuss how startups definition of “failure is not an option” is completely different. For startups it means they will try 5 or 10 or 20 approaches until they find one that works. They won’t stop until they succeed. Google’s culture seems to follow the Thomas Edison approach which paraphrased is “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found lots of approaches that don’t work, and I am closer to the solution”.

>> Follow Don Dodge

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Don Dodge, goals, Social Media Marketing, Yu-kai Chou
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Samir describes the course as:

Social media lessons to empower your marketing, guaranteed!

Left the Box Membership is a premier program to teach you how to best utilize social media. Learn how to engage with your consumers, build customer loyalty, and create buzz around your brand. Social media is the future of marketing, are you ready for it?

Ok, fair enough, one of the very best ways you can create buzz for your site is to intelligently engage in social media marketing. And to be honest, so many people do social media marketing completely wrong that a good, solid education in this method of marketing is definitely needed. I had no doubt that Samir had the qualifications to teach such a course. What I wanted to find out was whether or not he could pull it off in such a way that it would accomplish two things:

1. Is the material presented in such a way that everyone can understand it?
2. Is the material comprehensive enough to really cover everything someone needs to know to effectively manage a social media marketing campaign?

For me, those two things make all the difference between a good course and a bad one. It must be easy to understand, and it must be comprehensive enough to be useful. Does Samir’s course pass both those tests?

Let’s start with the first test; is it easy to understand? Samir passed this test with flying colors. The lessons are well laid out, in easily-digestible sections, with each one flowing to the next logically. In addition, the writing style is clear and concise, and there are plenty of supporting resources included to supplement the content presented. If for some reason, however, you are left confused about something, the private members forum is always there to clear things up. Just ask for help, and you’ll get the answers you need.

Great, but what about the total scope of the course? Is it comprehensive enough to cover everything we need to know to effectively start and manage a social media campaign? I’m going to have to make some educated guesses on this one. You see, I can’t answer it fully. Why? Because the course is an 8-week course, and I haven’t gone through the 8 weeks yet. However, I do have enough information to make some well educated guesses.

1. If all of the lessons are as comprehensive as the first, then it should be enough to accomplish the goal. I say “enough” because I don’t think the course will cover every single aspect that could possibly be covered based on what I’ve seen. So, no, it may not have every fact available on the subject. However, if it did, it would probably be too overwhelming anyway. From what I can tell, it looks as though it will have enough information to keep everyone on the right track, allowing them to make wise decisions, without overwhelming them and confusing them along the way.
2. If the supplemental resources, templates and tools of each lesson are as useful as the ones I’ve already seen, then they will go a long way in rounding out this course’s full complement of information.

So is something like this worth doing, and is it worth paying for? I’d say that depends upon how you value your time. If you’ve got lots more time than you have money, then you can probably figure everything out for yourself by trawling through lots of blog posts and forums, and weeding out the good information from the bad for yourself. That’s how many of us learned what we know over the years (and it can take years doing it that way). Of course, we didn’t have access to courses such as this either, way back when we began. Membership sites and classes are a "relatively" new phenomenon, but they can be very useful if they are done well. I think Samir has created one that has the right information, for an important topic, at a good price point, so I’d say this one is worth paying for. And of course, he offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so even if you disagree, you aren’t left feeling as though you’d made a mistake.

By the way, I have to commend Samir on creating such a well-designed course. I’ve often considered creating a few of these myself to supplement my eBuzz Coach service, but I just honestly haven’t found the time to do it. I know it would be a huge undertaking and would require a massive amount of my time, so it’s been put aside many times. Since I haven’t created a social media marketing course of my own, then I’m glad to be able to tell all of you about Samir’s instead. Without taking the entire course first, I can’t guarantee all the lessons will be exactly what you need, but luckily Samir guarantees it, so that’s what really counts.

I also see that he has a form on the site that you can fill out to sign up for the waiting list. By doing so, you’ll be among the first to know when they go live and get a discount too. I don’t know what the discount is, but as far as I’m concerned, any discount is a good discount! LOL.

The membership page gives specifics on the course, so I won’t repeat them here. But basically, if you’re looking to understand how you can best use social media, Samir’s membership program could take you from zero to marketing hero in 8 short weeks.

*This appears to be no longer available.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eBuzz Coach, Samir Balwani, social media, Social media lessons, Social Media Marketing, social media marketing course, social media training course
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.