Open up your mind and say, ahh...

I asked Jason Falls for a guest post to mark the release of his new book, “No Bulls–t Social Media“

Few can argue with the umbrella point of Brian’s latest book. Technology and the reclaiming of the marketplace by consumers has brought about the End of Business As Usual. Companies are collaborating internally, with customers and even one another far more than ever before. Businesses are becoming social, not just using social media. We’re conducting business in a new world.

But let us not forget that while these social and power structure shifts in the marketplace seem to indicate that many businesses and their practices were broken, they weren’t completely broken. We needed a new timing belt, not an entirely new engine.

The process we should know that still holds its own in the new business landscape is strategic planning. For most companies, strategy is top-down. You have business strategies that are then broken down into discipline strategies (like marketing) which can then be fractured out into strategies around practices like public relations or even social media. These ladder up to help accomplish discipline strategies which then aide in the business strategy completion.

For social media marketing specifically the biggest challenge most companies have in approaching the practice strategically is they lack a clear understanding of what social media marketing can do for the business. Identifying the possibilities is the critical first step in the strategic planning process. You’re not going to use social media marketing to solve supply chain issues in your distribution network because social media marketing doesn’t drive that type of activity.

Over the course of the last few years working with clients and seeing other companies implementing social media marketing efforts, I’ve identified seven primary business drivers of social media marketing. These seven things are what social can do for your business. They are:

• Enhance branding and awareness
• Protect reputation
• Extend public relations
• Build community or loyalty
• Extend customer service
• Facilitate research and development
• Drive sales or leads

Focusing on one, three or even all seven of these areas gives you a direction … a purpose for your efforts. Now you can dive into the business process you hopefully already know how to do: plan strategically. Set goals, delineate specific objectives that help accomplish those goals, then excise strategies and tactics that support those objectives.

When you do this, you approach social media marketing strategically. This eliminates two primary pain points for many businesses diving into social marketing. It keeps you from falling victim to the shiny new object syndrome and helps you measure what matters. If your activity can’t be traced upward to support your goal or goals in one or more of the business drivers, then you don’t do it.

Your objectives hopefully have specific triggers that make measuring easy. An example of a strong objective statement might be, “We want to reduce call center costs by 40% by end of year.” How do you measure you success with this objective? Look at your call center costs. How do you achieve the drop? Develop strategies that move customers to social channels or your website to facilitate support rather than calling.

No worrying about Twitter followers or ReTweets, Likes or Lists here. You measure what you’re trying to accomplish.

Strategy is not likely foreign to you. And as much as Brian’s assertions are right — business as usual no longer exists — some of our business practices are still not only relevant, but required.

Don’t be distracted by the technology, the tools, the new environment or even the fascinating possibilities. Approach your social marketing

Find more about the seven business drivers of social media marketing, including case studies and ways to measure them in Jason’s new book, co-authored with Erik Deckers, No Bulls–t Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. It’s available on Amazon or at many retail bookstores.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Google has announced that it has teamed up with J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore to make the Harry Potter books available through Google’s literary products.

Starting this fall, all seven Harry Potter tomes will make their debut on Google eBooks, the search giant’s ebookstore. Unlike most digital book platforms, Google eBooks lets users port their purchases to more than 80 ereaders. The books will also be available through Google Books and the company’s iOS and Android apps.

As part of the distribution deal, Google also secured exclusive rights to be the payment platform for all Pottermore.com purchases. That means you will be paying for your ebooks and audiobooks via Google Checkout rather than PayPal or Amazon Payments.

Pottermore, which launches this fall, is designed to be an interactive online reading experience. It will also be the exclusive place to purchase the ebook versions of Harry Potter. The site is rumored to have gaming elements, awards and achievements, and virtual items.

Harry Potter mania is at an all-time high, despite the last book being released in 2007. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final film in the cinematic adaptation of the series, is breaking box office records and is set to become the first billion-dollar movie in the franchise.

Evidently, I’ve written about the basics before in a different context.

I was thinking about the basics of marketing, the 4 P’s as they’re sometimes called:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion

I think most people spend a lot of time on promotion. I think lots of people fall back into price when they fail at promotion. I worry that people don’t think much about place. I’m not alone in knowing that we don’t often work hard enough on product, and we try to make up for it in promotion (and customer service).

The Basics Matter

To me, place is a huge one. Distribution matters. I’m about to launch some tests of some sales channels that I’ve never used before and I’m more excited than anything, because I suspect (and my working hypothesis) is that I will be really successful in using this channel. (Remember, it’s an educated guess, so who knows, and no I won’t tell you, because it relates to me, and it’s not very amazing and earth-shattering.)

Place is a basic that we don’t think nearly enough about. Distribution, moving things to weblocal, thinking through the variants on partnerships, all that kind of stuff really matters. I noticed a sub shop had partnered with a bunch of gas station convenience stores up in Maine recently. The shop is good. Their product is good. But the distribution and branding of being paired with these stores means that there are many more units selling more product than their closest competitors.

Product matters, but I’m not smart enough to write about it, except to say that I work hard at stuffing value into the products I create. If we don’t shoot to deliver more value than is expected, we’re already down 1/4 of the basics, such as it were.

Promotion is Great. Do More.

I think promotion is where we spend a lot of our time on marketing, but as time goes on, I’m thinking harder about two of the other three Ps in that old, worn model. Why? Because I think there’s a lot more magic left in that old silk hat.

Thoughts?

My blog is one of my key tools in growing business. I use it to promote other people’s good work. I use it to share my way of thinking. I use it to equip you for success, knowing that should you need more than what’s offered on the blog, you’ll ask for a way to work with me. Here’s how I look at distribution and why I think it’s important.

Distribution Points for Your Blog

I currently share my blog in 3 main places: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. In each case, they are shared differently.

In LinkedIn, I have the WordPress for LinkedIn connection, so that imports my blog in a simple, clean way into the regular fabric of LinkedIn. If I really need traction on a post, I might share it again in my network updates, but I try to use that very sparingly. LinkedIn doesn’t really like a lot of link promotion.

On Twitter, my automated account, @broganmedia shares out my blog post, but I don’t rely on just that. If I think the post is good, I tweet out a link to it, asking a customized question with that link. For instance, if I were tweeting out this story (and I will), I’d say something like, “how many distribution points do you have for your blog?” And then I’d put the link to this post. Make sense?

On Facebook, it’s shared via a note. I don’t do very much with that method, to be honest. Instead, I rely on shareability, as I’ve covered it before. But, lest you think I don’t value Facebook’s addition to my blog, I’ll tell you of the time that Steve Rubel accidentally kept me from quitting Facebook. You see, I was just about to hit the delete button, when I saw that a new message had come in. Steve said to me, “I don’t know why I never saw your blog before now, but it just came across my screen on Facebook.” I thought, “rats,” and kept my page alive.

Email – Sparingly

Now, let me be clear. I love it when you subscribe to my blog via email. If you haven’t, feel free to sign up here (I respect your privacy):

But I really rarely and sparingly send out emails pointing to my posts. For the most part, if I know how to reach you, you probably subscribe to my blog. Secondarily, it feels like a waste of an email touch. I’d rather use those for important things, like promoting Invisible People.

One last note about email: I think it’s great to put a generic link to your blog in your email signature, if that’s what you most want people to do after you email them.

Distribution Elsewhere

There are many more services through which you can distribute and/or promote your blog. I’ve only talked about the three major and one minor method through which I’m distributing [chrisbrogan.com]. By all means, feel free to add other points in the comments, and we can talk about those, as well.

What about you? Where else are you distributing your blog? How have you found the experience? Any questions on what I’ve put up above?