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Business Plan on a Napkin
“Business Plan on a Paper Napkin” is a very interesting segment of the startup competition organized by women 2.0. In a not-so-common medium (napkin), how do you articulate your business such that the high points are clearly communicated. It took us more time to find the right set of pens and the paper, than to actually draw the napkin. The concept was very clear – and, the second rev was the final one.
We had to rush to the drop-box (UPS Store in San Mateo) to deposit the napkin by hand – as we had not time to get it post-marked or sent by mail. The images below show the preparation and the final napkin, with Business Plan presented on it.
Preparation for Business Plan on a Paper Napkin
Business Plan on a Paper Napkin - Women 2.0 Startup Competition
Read more about the women 2.0 pitch contest and the application process here. View the 2 min Video submitted for the application here.
In Social Media, Always Be The Host, Not The Master!
Brand v/s Consumer Activity on Twitter
According to a report by eMarketer, “marketers are using a significantly greater share of their tweets to push out news and information rather than converse with other users. Just 16% of brands’ tweets use the “@” symbol, a sign of back-and-forth engagement on the service – very low compared to consumer stats, which is almost 43%.”
Consumer activity on Twitter
Stats in Isolation, do not Mean Anything
Indeed, the very fabric of Internet is changing into a platform that facilitates conversation. Consumers are now engaging in conversation with countless others through network of friends, across international boundaries, and who probably they have never physically met – connected through shared interest, belief or philosophy. In this evolution of consumer-brand relationship, Brands that have successfully adapted to the changing consumers are the ones that have found ways to foster and nurture a community of their most loyal fans.
However, an “engagement service/ system” for brands, which is both scalable and efficient, is essentially a community of enthusiasts and loyal supporter who engage for and on-behalf of the brands, and not necessarily the numbers of @ they accumulate over time.
Brands Builds Communities, Gathers Advocates
Let your Community be the Voice of your Brand
If you are spending your ‘social media time’ to listen to all mentions of your brands as they happen, and respond to them real time –either you are not working strategically or you have surplus resources. Assigning a dedicated resource 24×7 to respond to mentions is not “long-term” thinking. Listening is very important – and, there is a value in aggregating response, which is not collected in isolation – to understand patterns / behaviors and to identify collective insights of your brand mentions. However, it is neither scalable nor necessary to put a resource for real time response to all brand mentions – as they happen. A real time response is great, but it need not come from you. Instead, a brand can help create and manage a thriving community in each network – that stands up for the brand. For example, when a prospect asks a question about a product, and a friend from the network responds to this query, the recommendation sounds much more real and convincing.
The Intuit Example
One brand that comes to mind, when you think of community involvement is Intuit. In 2009 the company built community right into their products. Users have become company ambassadors and today, 70% of users get their answers from the community site versus customer support – significantly driving down support costs. Intuit is leveraging Twitter and observing customer-created videos on YouTube that showcase Intuit’s products.”
There are endless list of successful brand communities like Running Plus (Nike), My Starbucks Idea, Dell Ideastrom, eBay Powersellers etc. These communities are present everywhere and doing well with or without user interaction directly.
Bring Community Building in your Agenda
Build your community - From diverse population, with same passion for your brand.
Here are some pointers which will help you kick start your own community with better results:
- Identify the loyal supporters of your brands – These are the influencers, who amplify your messages to a larger audience, and are those few loyal supporters, who are also respected in their communities. It makes a great sense to nurture, and acknowledge their help in building your brand. Read about how you can get this information from ObjectiveMarketer.
- Foster many-to-many relationships. A brand community is not a one-to-many relationship—that’s brand autocracy. People need to interact with each other and not simply “the brand” if you want to create a successful brand community. Therefore, build peer-to-peer communication into your structure.
- Don’t create “more.” Massive amounts of information is being created about your brand and distributed across the web everyday. Rather than spend time asking people to create more content, make it easy for people to enjoy and engage with the stuff that already exists.
- Let your advocates advocate. The only way to inspire your best advocates is to let them work their magic without interference except in issues of ethics and legality. Your advocates are not pawns—they are your partners, so treat them that way.
- Observe the 1-9-90 rule. This new rule, pioneered by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li in their seminal book Groundswell, is quickly becoming a standard: 1% of your population will create content, 9% will comment or engage with it, and 90% will just browse. Voyeurs rule the online world, so keep this in mind.
Finally always keep in mind the three golden rules:
- WORD OF MOUTH DRIVES CHOICE
- CUSTOMERS TRUST, RELY AND ACT ON ADVICE FROM PEOPLE THEY KNOW
- ALWAYS BE THE “HOST” & NOT THE “MASTER”
An interesting article was published on The Fast Company, and the following thoughts do great justice to summarize the content of this blogpost “The one thing to remember: the turbo charger (social media) is useless without an engine (passionate customers). Businesses must offer a great customer experience to draw in those passionate customers, who will in turn spread the word about your products and services.”
Campaign HeatMaps – Know your Campaign Sweet-Spot
We have figured it out, more or less, that the best day to launch an email campaign is “Tuesday” – based on logic as well as stats collected on click percentage the emails receive when sent out during the week.
Social Media usage is very different than email usage. And, as such to come up with a generic benchmark like with emails, may not be ideal – and also too pre-mature at this stage. The best benchmark would be to know from your own stats, generated by interactions from your own followers / fans of social channels – suggesting the days and times, when your audience is most attentive. Again, depending on what type of message it is (for e.g. promotional v/s casual) the response of your audience would be different.
- Campaign Sweet-Spot: ObjectiveMarketer Heat-Map
ObjectiveMarketer has a very useful feature to provide you with an answer to the “sweetspot” question for your campaigns and it is called Campaign HeatMap. It shows you the aggregate performance of all clicks in your campaign in a day of the week X time of the day matrix. Getting this information at the campaign level also helps identify the pattern for different kind of messages. This graph visually tells you on what day and at what time, your campaign has received maximum number of clicks.
Now, you can use this information when you are deciding to launch a big announcement. Based on your past stats and patterns of clicks received by your audience, this can be a crucial piece of information you need to get a sense of timing for your campaigns.
What more information you think can make this heatmap more useful? Please, do share with us!Let’s begin the conversation.
If you would like to try this feature and several other such useful capabilities of ObjectiveMarketer, please sign up for 15 days free trial at
http://app.objectivemarketer.com
Status Update from Twitter
Twitter is currently returning an error on oAuth requests. Users will be unable to add new accounts, or might have some issues with publishing until this is resolved.
Email: support@objectivemarketer.com in case there are questions.
How big a deal it is to get on Mashable?
No matter what you say, it is a big deal! But, it is even a bigger deal to be mentioned as players helping the industry!
As published on Mashable in a post by Chritina Warren, and I quote:
Seeing higher level tools like AMP, as well as systems from companies like SocialTALK, Vitrue and ObjectiveMarketer can help push the entire industry forward.
We believe in the potential that businesses see in social media, and welcome as a part of this industry, all competition and innovation that is taking place.
5 use cases of campaigns in ObjectiveMarketer
One of the first steps we recommend ObjectiveMarketer users, when they get started with the product, is to “create some campaigns“.
ObjectiveMarketer Campaigns - Like Folders, you can use to organize your messages.
A campaign means a different things to different people, depending on which side of the business they are coming from. In ObjectiveMarketer, the concept of campaigns is very simple – it is a group of similarly themed messages. A campaign is created as a placeholder for contents, including messages and assets like YouTube video etc. A campaign in ObjectiveMarketer is akin to Folders in computer used to organize files, or it can be thought of as a Project, or a Program or an Initiative. Usually, a campaign in ObjectiveMarketer can be a part of a bigger organization wide campaign.
The concept of campaigns is one of the most powerful and unique features of ObjectiveMarketer, which is designed to avoid randomness and to make social media management more strategy driven. The top five use cases suggesting reasons, why creating a campaign can be very helpful in a social media process are:
- Better organization of messages
- Makes communication more strategic
- Ability to audit content
- Implement A/B/n test scenarios
- Aggregate view of performance
Let us take each of them, one by one, with some real use cases.
Better organization of messages
Tammy works for a digital media agency, offering search, social and mobile marketing services. To promote, and to increase the brand awareness of her agency, Tammy uses ObjectiveMarketer. She creates three campaigns, each representing the three different focus areas of her business. For each of these campaigns, she structures her content and delivery options.
A simple way of organizing her messages like this allows Tammy to be completely in the know of where she is spending more time, and which of these areas are working better with her audience on social channels. Now that her communication strategy is streamlined, she can concentrate on things like “how to get new clients, and make existing ones happier”.
Makes communication more strategic
The most important reason why you should use Campaigns is that it allows you to be strategic, and helps you to plan before you publish.
Mike manages social media for a Real Estate business. He plans ahead of time, what is the content he is going to use to engage his audience with. He plans on some themes, which are his campaigns in ObjectiveMarketer, like:
- Avoid Foreclosure – This campaign will share tips for those homeowners who are in trouble with their mortgage. These messages will create a positive image for the company, and will open threads for interaction and better user engagement.
- First Time Buyer Tips – This campaign will share messages aimed at users who are 1st time buyers. This is a very niche set of users, and the purpose is again to educate and engage with users.
- Congratulations! Houses Sold – This is an automated message, which is fed from their listing site and each time a property is sold, the message is sent out. This demonstrates the success of business, in very subtle manner.
- Free Tours – One day of the week the real estate business offers free tours of the properties for the first 50 users who register. This is a promotional campaign, primarily a lead generation activity.
As can be seen above, just deciding upon the strategy of communication, and sticking to them helps you to plan further about what content to generate, where to get it from, how frequent the content needs to be shared and such – saving time, and working on things which have been well planned, and thought of.
Ability to audit content
Debbie likes to create her campaigns by the week. So, beginning each month she creates 4 campaigns like June Week1, June Week2 … and she schedules messages for her campaigns ahead of time, sometimes for the next week too. This way she can take a look at her whole month broken by weeks even before the reports are generated.
Another interesting use case of creating campaigns for audit purposes is to create campaigns by user names. Each time, a user shares a content that user will select the campaign by her name. This is an easy, effortless way of keeping tab of each individual users responsibility.
Implement A/B/n test scenarios
ObjectiveMarketer campaigns by design allow you to test different strategies. For example, the tone of the messages, the placement and use of keywords, the use of hashtags. How do you know, which type of messages get you more response from audience? A use case that was tried out by one of the ObjectiveMarketer users was as follows. He created two different campaigns, each one with a contrasting tone. In one, he used a more salesy pitch and in the other, made it sound more informational – both leading to the same website. What he saw was that both received comparable number of clicks, but, the second one received a higher number of retweets, and got him more followers. Once, you have identified what works for you, chose that as the winning strategy. And, with the feedback that ObjectiveMarketer stats provide, keep optimizing.
Aggregate view of performance
The best use case of ObjectiveMarketer campaigns is the ability to view an overall campaign performance. You can see an aggregate performance of your campaign, and compare different parameters for all your campaigns. You can create benchmark for your campaigns and try different ways to meet your campaign goals.
Summarizing it all
There are several ways in which a grouping of messages can help you be more systematic and strategic. If you have a use case, which is not mentioned here, please feel free to share. The step before monetizing from any initiative is managing. If you are managing well, you can make better plans for a sustainable business objective. And, the campaigns help you to consolidate, and manage your initiatives, aligning your social media goals with the bigger corporate goals.
As Guy Kawasaki once said,” if you are really trying to take the heat off Twitter Marketing, you better do it right“. And, ObjectiveMarketer campaigns are one of those tools that help you do it right.
Twitter Issues: Status Update
http://status.twitter.com/
Twitter Issues: Status Update
ObjectiveMarketer gets new User Interface, and more…
Good news for ObjectiveMarketer fans.
I am very excited to unveil ObjectiveMarketer with its all new Look and Feel, today. ObjectiveMarketer is one of the leading platforms for Social Media management and marketing, and it makes me doubly excited to announce the addition of new reporting functionality with the brand new interface.
ObjectiveMarketer gets a New Look and Feel, and more...
ObjectiveMarketer’s new design includes a change in the color scheme, and better navigation. The color scheme stands out on the screen with shades of Blue, and represents the hues of Web 3.0 and Twitter. The change in the look and feel of the tabs is designed to make it much easier than before to navigate between features. Few changes that existing users of ObjectiveMarketer will notice include:
- Report Tab (New)- This has two options as of now : Campaign Summary Report and Campaign Metrics Comparison Reports. The Campaign Summary report gives information about the levels of Activity, Engagement and value for each campaign. The “more” link in the same report provides information about the aggregate sum of all Campaign Activity and Engagements.
Reports Tab is added in the main menu.
- Date / Time Range (New) – ObjectiveMarketer users can specify the Date /Time Range, including Today, Last 7 Days, Month to Date, Year to Date etc. The data in the report will be pulled at an aggregate level for the selected date/time range*.
Generate Reports based on Date/Time Range
- Tags is now a part of the Report Tab.
- Stream (real time Twitter Search, and engagement tool) is moved into the Tabs interface, as it is an integral part of the application.
- Search and Calendar have moved right, on to a new place.
ObjectiveMarketer Calendar
- Post button (the heart of it all) gets a new icon – and who knows, this icon becomes synonymous to ObjectiveMarketer.
Post Message gets a new Icon
- The Accounts Link and Preferences options have been added to the Admin Tab.
- Trends – We are taking away Trends from this version of ObjectiveMarketer. If you select Trends (Reports Tab), you will get a message. We have great plans for the Trends but, we will build it on a different set of priorities.
- Help Links (New) – The all new help links are added to provide documentation about ObjectiveMarketer. Users should keep following the support portalor Slideshare Channels for more info on product features and FAQs.
ObjectiveMarketer Help Resources
Today’s news doesn’t stop at the User Interface and Usability features. I will take the opportunity to share that in the near term future we are going to add several new upgrades to the product that will make sharing, managing, measuring and your overall social experience, even more powerful, even more enjoyable and even more rewarding.
To check out the brand new ObjectiveMarketer, go on over to
http://app.objectivemarketer.com
. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Clarification that the new ObjectiveMarketer will be rolled out gradually over the next few weeks.
Post by: Amita Paul, CEO of ObjectiveMarketer
Social Media is No guess game. With ObjectiveMarketer, not any more.
Social Media Campaigns are becoming more and more complex with multiple channels, distributed segments, different personas – and so the solutions to manage these campaigns effectively are becoming more than essential in order to reach the right audience, at the right time, with the right message. As the new channels emerge, the strategies and the implementation of these strategies have to be completely aligned to the nature of the channels. ObjectiveMarketer going in this direction has developed the most powerful, and industry’s first campaign management platform that helps organizations to manage, monitor and measure different kind of communications across multiple social media channels. With ObjectiveMarketer, traditional marketers can easily transition to the new channels, and at the same time adopt to the new rules of the game, effortlessly.
Objective Marketer today is the market leader in management of Social Media thanks to a meaningful product that provides relevant features to manage and measure marketing campaigns:
1. Integrated goal oriented campaign management system
2. Comprehensive Analytics – Multiple dimensions (Tags, time, geography, historical, trend, browser etc)
3. Content Integration – Polls, Landing Pages (Patent Pending), Tags, Distribution List, media library
4. User Management – Roles, permissions and access control
5. Automation / Scheduling / RSS Feeds
6. Buzz monitoring – trend, context and sentiments (NPS)
ObjectiveMarketer constantly thrives to give you the best solution to manage and measure you campaigns. As you run your campaigns through ObjectiveMarketer, you find ways to create your own benchmark, and set yourself for success that is achievable, and repeatable. If you want to take the guess game out of Social Media, then ObjectiveMarketer is your player.
Now, you can avail the 30 days free trial. To sign up for the free trial, visit
http://app.objectivemarketer.com
or send an email to info@objectivemarketer.com for more information about the product and pricing.
Is LinkedIn a part of your channel strategy?
As social media practitioner, it is imperative that you have a solid Channel Strategy in place.
Social Web represents a complex, multi-directional flow of communication, and it is very important to understand the behavior of your community, the ways to engage with them and evaluate the strategy that makes your social media campaigns most effective. Though complex, social media networks also represents a well-segmented constituent of population, as the members themselves opt-in to participate in social channels of their interest, and decide when they want to interact. So, the question is “What message to send, and where?” The key is in finding the right balance to make the best of your social media presence.
LinkedIn - Adding to your social media marketing mix
ObjectiveMarketer integrates multiple channels as a part of the entire campaign strategy and not just a social media stream. Whether you are planning a campaign to run across multiple channels simultaneously, and want to measure the performance of your campaigns by channel, or whether you are running different campaigns on different channels, we help you implement and execute your channel strategy effectively – so that you have a clear visibility into the success of your campaigns, by channels.
With LinkedIn integration, we help you bring LinkedIn into your social media marketing mix. With 40 million plus users, and a network that is the most organic, LinkedIn forms an integral part of your channel strategy. With ObjectiveMarketer, you can:
- Add multiple LinkedIn Profiles
- Plan and schedule your LinkedIn campaigns (status Updates)
- Execute your campaigns to LinkedIn simultaneously with other channels
- Measure campaign and channel effectiveness
- Prepare a better, informed strategy for on-going, future campaigns
If you would like to try ObjectiveMarketer for your organization, please signup at
http://objectivemarketer.com
, or email us at info@objectivemarketer.com to request a demo.
http://blog.appboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/linkedin2.jpg
