Written by Erik Wolf and the small business marketing experts at Zero-G Creative, this blog is for entrepreneurs who feel "weighed down" by ineffective marketing. It is our mission to help small business owners reach for the stars and put simple and inexpensive marketing strategies to work for their businesses.
We were talking to David Meerman Scott — author of World Wide Rave — on our radio show this morning and he has an unusual perspective on distributing content online. When offering an ebook or a white paper, most marketers would tell you to offer your content in exchange for an email address or other personal information. The rationale is, of course, that a business owner should be able to A) determine who is downloading their valuable content and B) have the ability to follow up with that individual afterward.
Scott didn’t think so. In his experience, he claimed that allowing site visitors to download the paper without providing any personal information would increase the interest and readership of the content several times over.
So what’s more valuable? The information you get from the people who download your content online or the much larger readership that you may be missing out on because you are asking for information?
We’ve decided to make ourselves guinea pigs in this experiment. For the first time, our white papers are available with no strings or required information to provide. You can find them here:
For the next few months we’ll be openly reporting on how these papers do in terms of any increase in downloads and whether or not we see our online leads diminish as a result of this. Stay tuned, this should be interesting!
Our Twitter friends call it a TweetUp, our clients and colleagues call it networking, but everyone agrees - it’s ALWAYS a good time. Our next event is set for Wednesday, June 3rd at South City Kitchen in Vinings from 6-9PM (or later as is usually our custom).
Over 100 people came out to our last event and we’d love to see you at this one! Please RSVP using the form below. We’ll see you there!
There are a lot of solutions for funding a business beyond dipping into your own personal savings and acquiring venture capital which can not only be difficult but also compromise the amount of control you retain over your enterprise. There are incubator and accelerator programs popping up all over the country. Brian Cork’s Accelerator program and Shotput Ventures are just two examples here in the Atlanta area…
Jeff Hilimire of Shotput Ventures will be on Gravity Free Radio this morning and Brian Cork was on earlier this year talking about their programs. Enjoy!
GlobalTraxOnline, the world’s first digital music platform with genre-specific distribution channels, has named Atlanta-based Zero-G Creative its national advertising and marketing agency of record. The independently owned firm will develop GlobalTraxOnline’s branding, interactive, e-commerce and social media campaigns. GlobalTraxOnline helps artists with online music distribution and allows them to sell their music through up to 400 digital retailers like iTunes, eMusic and Amazon.com, among others. The service is scheduled to launch later this month.
GlobalTraxOnline selected Zero-G to create a Web-based strategy that helps remove the mystery from music distribution. Using social media and interactive marketing, the agency’s campaign targets specific audiences and offers a different creative execution for each music genre. PR and promotional efforts will also support the integrated campaign.
Gerald Wiggins, founder of GlobalTraxOnline and a 20-year music industry veteran, said the company selected the Atlanta-based agency because it understood the needs of a start-up company. The agency’s location was also key, as Wiggins believes that Atlanta is having a significant impact on emerging and independent musicians. “Zero-G Creative developed a unique, eye-catching brand and website that can be customized to user preferences,” Wiggins said. “The site allows us to target our web marketing to musicians in specific genres, thereby maximizing our marketing spend and conversion rates.”
“Zero-G’s challenge was to create an experience that will help GlobalTraxOnline educate artists who want to generate revenue from their work, but don’t know where to start,” said Erik Wolf, president of Zero-G. “In the interactive and social media world, we believe the secret to accomplishing this online is ease-of-use and authenticity. As a result, the user feels in control and is compelled to share the site with their network.”
Zero-G Creative will also provide website maintenance for GlobalTraxOnline.
We joked on the radio show a couple of weeks ago that we might need to implement some kind of “swear jar” to keep us from talking about social media. But let’s face it, this topic is everywhere and it pops up in discussions constantly. Over the last week though, the big concern that a few of our clients have raised is around how social media strategies can be implemented in their organizations without exposing too much — especially when it comes to the personal lives of their employees.
The idea that a company’s clients or partners could be friending/following/linking with its employees is a frightening prospect for many business owners. After all, we can’t control our employees online like we can in the office… Even though enough precedent has been set, most folks aren’t concerned about disciplinary action at work when they go online and spout off abut their political views or post weekend party pics or inappropriate cartoons. So what do you do and how do you approach social media, if at all?
Here are three realities that we all need to deal with in this new atmosphere of openness that social media and the Internet have conspired to create:
1. Any expectation we might have had previously about a clean “separation” of our personal and professional lives is gone. We used to be able to compartmentalize these things fairly easily, but social media has completely shattered that. Some would argue that it’s made us all more whole and more human in a lot of ways as it allows you to add a lot of dimension to your relationships, but this is exactly what scares so many employers. The people who connect with you online have the opportunity to learn a LOT about you and very quickly. Be prepared for that.
2. The online “bond” between your company and your employees already exists as soon as someone self-identifies themselves as an employee online — and keep in mind that many social media platforms encourage users to add their current and past employers to their profiles. Bottom line? This WILL happen. Expect that over time a large number of your employees, both present and past, will have your firm’s name on their profile and expect that you will be permanently linked, even after that employee moves on.
3. Your company is going to have a presence on social media whether you want it to or not. The toothpaste is out of the tube so to speak and it’s never going back in. Your only two choices are to A) participate or B) try to ignore it. If you’re wondering, B is not a smart choice. Even if you aren’t thrilled with the idea of trying to use social media in your business, at least participation gives you the opportunity to influence what is being said about you.
Hopefully we all understand that we’re all in this social media thing whether we like it or not… So how can our businesses participate without the risk of being embarrassed by our employees? We can’t. Unfortunately, the risk will always be there. But at the same time, the risk has also always been there that our employees might embarrass us at meetings, sales calls, trade shows, networking events, via email and over the phone. When these situations occur, managers tend to use them as opportunities for coaching and professional development unless disciplinary action is required. Social media is no different.
As business owners sit squeamishly, wondering how long it’s going to be before this social media business leaps up and bites them,a lot of us tend to forget a simple truth about people: they are ruled by self-interest. Ultimately, this is your only and most powerful defense against social media transgressions. It’s in your employees’ self-interest to behave appropriately online. The problem is that not many have taken the time to consider the larger implications of who they associate with on Twitter or what kinds of pictures they post on Facebook. Nobody has outlined expectations of professionalism or given them a friendly heads up that — if they aren’t careful — their social media activities could cost them their job or help prevent them from getting another in the future.
For many of us, I know, this is just common sense. But now there’s a younger generation that grew up into MySpace and Facebook the way myself and a lot of other late Gen X’ers grew up into email. We’ve got young professionals that have been managing profiles on sites like these since they entered college — or perhaps longer if they were early blogging adopters. These young whippersnappers probably don’t understand the traditional separation of personal and professional because they never experienced it. The best way, in my opinion, to ensure a seamless and relatively surprise-free entry into social media is to talk about it and try to prepare employees for it, just as you would prepare them for a big meeting or a trade show. And if things don’t go as planned, a conversation needs to be had.
Social media is today what email was 15 years ago — a technology that’s cutting edge (albeit overhyped), heavily consumed by young people and EVERY DAY being adopted by businesses in greater numbers. Your firm NEEDS to particpate or be left behind. Don’t let the risk of being embarrassed by your team be the excuse that keeps you on the sidelines.
We also had a great discusssion on these topics on Gravity Free Radio this week. You can find the podcast here.
Obviously not everyone is an idiot. Sure, let’s be honest we all know a few — um — interesting people but very few folks I know would classify the majority of their acquaintances as such. So if relatively few people are, in fact, actual idiots, why are so many marketers and business owners so eager to dumb down their messages in an ill-conceived effort to make sure that every silly objection is answered ahead of time?
It seems to be a natural and nearly irresistible impulse to clutter our communications with the most mundane information about our products and services because we’re afraid that our customers aren’t going to “get” what we’re selling and so we feel compelled to tell them absolutely everything.
I say that if your customers don’t understand what you’re trying to tell them, don’t complicate things by telling them it comes in other colors, has six lights built in and can be used in the living room just as easily as it can in the family room. Instead, why not simplify the message? The reason the iPod became so popular has something to do with the elegant design and those famous white earplugs, but unlike the many MP3 players that came before it, iPod never talked about technology and features or any of that. They focused on a single message: “all your music, anywhere you are”, communicated clearly and concisely in all of their communications and often without a single written word other than “iPod”.
Maybe we all can’t get away with doing things as cleanly as Apple does, but the principle applies to businesses of all sizes and in all industries. Simple messages work best. Think about all the greatest lessons you’ve ever learned in your life… Odds are you can easily sum them up in a sentence or less. So why would you need three pages to tell someone about a basic product or service?
When I start complicating things because I’m afraid my audience won’t get it, maybe I should be wondering whether or not I even get it…
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