Marketing
Article originally published February 7th, 2012, on the blog of James Wong – The Online & Offline Adventures of a Social Entreprenuer.
February 7, 2012 | Raleigh, North Carolina — It’s always a pleasure speaking to students eager to learn from experienced marketing professionals, but it’s especially nice to assist faculty at NC State and North Carolina Central University — both of which I have attended.
I was invited to speak to the NCSU Student MBA Association Monday afternoon on behalf of iContact. The requested topic was on how digital marketing, trends and technologies have changed the marketing landscape as a whole — a topic I am quite passionate about, and truly enjoy discussing.
While I assumed it would be the typical intimate crowd for events such as this, I was pleasantly surprised to walk into a packed room at Nelson Hall. In fact, the organizers of the event stated afterward that it was their most attended presentation to date. More importantly, the students all left energized and enlightened by both the iContact story, and the digital marketing tools and services we provide our clients with.
Topics Discussed During the “Town Hall” Style Session:
February 7, 2012 | Raleigh, North Carolina — It’s always a pleasure speaking to students eager to learn from experienced marketing professionals, but it’s especially nice to assist faculty at NC State and North Carolina Central University — both of which I have attended.
I was invited to speak to the NCSU Student MBA Association Monday afternoon on behalf of iContact. The requested topic was on how digital marketing, trends and technologies have changed the marketing landscape as a whole — a topic I am quite passionate about, and truly enjoy discussing.
While I assumed it would be the typical intimate crowd for events such as this, I was pleasantly surprised to walk into a packed room at Nelson Hall. In fact, the organizers of the event stated afterward that it was their most attended presentation to date. More importantly, the students all left energized and enlightened by both the iContact story, and the digital marketing tools and services we provide our clients with.
Topics Discussed During the “Town Hall” Style Session:
- Experiences of an Online Community Manager
- The “iContact Story” — My Experiences and Lessons Learned in a Technology Startup
- Agile-based Development
- Structure of an Integrated Marketing Organization
- Marketing Considerations for Nonprofits
Article originally published on the blog of James Wong - The Online & Offline Adventures of a Social Entreprenuer.
Today, myself and Community Managers all across the nation are celebrating our successes, during the 3rd Annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD). This internet-based pop culture celebration was originally founded back in 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang, of whom dubbed the 4th Monday of January as a day to reflect and to give thanks to Community Managers across the online landscape.
2012 marks my 18th year of managing online communities in various forms and industries. It is only as I reflect upon my own personal and professional experiences, that I realize how much the world has changed through technology and its adoption.
Today, myself and Community Managers all across the nation are celebrating our successes, during the 3rd Annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD). This internet-based pop culture celebration was originally founded back in 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang, of whom dubbed the 4th Monday of January as a day to reflect and to give thanks to Community Managers across the online landscape.
2012 marks my 18th year of managing online communities in various forms and industries. It is only as I reflect upon my own personal and professional experiences, that I realize how much the world has changed through technology and its adoption.
The Glory Days of BBS's
It was 1994 and I was only 12 years old when I first became a Community Manager. Of course, we weren't referred by that title at this point, as the internet was still a technology mainly used by "nerds" with pocket protectors and the latest in Sony Walkman technology. We were known only by those in the profession as System Operators, "SysOp" for short. SysOps managed rudimentary text-based communities called Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), which were the precursor peer-to-peer networks before the popular adoption of the Internet as we know today. Users had to dial into the server through phone lines, and most BBS systems only had a single incoming line, with a small handful of BBS's having up to three incoming phone lines. This was state-of-the-art and only a hobby for technologically inclined geeks of the 1990's. In fact, technology was so limited during this time period that Google was only in its early start-up stages and was still being updated manually at this point in Internet history. As a SysOp of three local BBS's, I spend many hours dialing in and connecting to various BBS's, constantly making new connections, new friends and absorbing as much knowledge and insight into what was popular and what wasn't. Today, we call this user experience and usability studies, user behavior and competitive analysis. Back then, I called it listening to the community. Through text-only forums and in-game messaging within games like LORDS or MUD, SysOps were able to get a sense of what users enjoyed, wanted and needed from their BBS community.Community Management Today
Fast forward 18 years, and we now have massive networks like Facebook and Twitter, and an entire society almost completely interconnected via laptops, mobile devices and even their internet-enabled TVs. We live in a world that operates on two timetables, the real world and the internet world, where time seemingly travels at 10x the speed of real-time. Regardless of the technologies involved, and adoption rate, the basic principles of community management still holds true even today. Listening, engaging and developing new features that serve the purpose of the community, has and always will be the cornerstone of any successful online community. Community Managers must be given the flexibility and tools to quickly react to the needs of their communities, or risk mass exoduses to other communities more capable of meeting their needs.Bridging the Online with the Offline
These days, I spend much of my time challenged with bridging the online and offline communities in which we live. While many organizations are only focused on engaging their supporters and community members via Facebook and other social networks, I enjoy bridging the gap and capitalizing on the benefits of connecting the online with the offline. Today's young generation of social media consumers have grown up knowing nothing but connecting with friends via Facebook, and text messaging their friends to stay in touch. Lost are the face-to-face communication skills vital to life-long success in the real world. As Community Managers, it's our responsibility to serve our advocates and supporters as best as we can. In my mind, this includes bridging the online to offline gaps. Some of the most successful local networks are popular because they actively try to bring their online communities into the offline world for meet and greets, activities, games, events and more. Linkedin Live Raleigh is a prime example of how an online community of over 100 million, can be enhanced through the opportunity of local members to come together and connect in the offline world. As one of the organizing partners, Virginia Johnson and I have fostered an environment of support, networking and community outreach at our monthly business networking events. In fact, we've managed to also bridge the gap between the for-profit and non-profit worlds which typically do not attend the same events, yet through the right messaging, one-to-one connections and online conversation, we've managed to integrate the two "worlds" and pull them both in and out of the digital world.Celebrate With Us!
So take a moment today and thank your Community Managers that represent the online brands, services, businesses and organizations that you've come to love and pledge your loyalty to. Seek out opportunities to connect with the communities you're a member of, both in the online and offline world. Don't hesitate to offer feedback and suggestions to your Community Managers, because you never know which suggestions will make the cut - but those suggestions not offered are guaranteed to be overlooked. Community Managers... never stop listening to your members, advocates and supporters. Embrace their feedback and fight for the flexibility to maintain the purpose and mission of the community at large. Strive to always improve upon your community, and whenever possible, bridge the gap between your online and offline membership. Success is measured in many ways, but a truly successful Community Manager will know it in the voices and hearts of the members and advocates. It's often the qualitative measurement of community sentiment that matters more than just the quantitative bottom-line. Satisfy the mission and purpose of the community, and they will always stand loyally by your brand. Written By:
James C. Wong, Co-Founder & General Partner of Empowered Ideas
As social media technologies erode away at the foundation of traditional media, it seems imperative that today’s journalists capitalize on their personal brands. In the past, many journalists and reporters put great emphasis on associating themselves with the brands of the major media and news networks.
However, as social media technologies acquire more and more users, and as these technologies integrate into mobile technology, the need to build one’s own brand has never been more crucial. Media end users have a virtual smorgasbord of media consumption methods, and therefore, have devastated traditional mediums like magazines, newspapers, television, and even radio; which once stood as the medium giants of their day.
In order to truly be successful in today’s digital age, media professionals must begin to develop communities of followers, readers, and fans. Through social media technologies and communities, journalists can now receive instant feedback on their work, and even cater their work to meet their followers on a much more personal basis.
As more and more newspapers and media organizations downsize their mediums and staff, I predict that these media organizations will rely more heavily on contractors rather than hiring full time staff members. This was a key point supported by fellow panelist Sam Methany of the Capital Broadcasting Company.
A perfect example of niche journalism is the lack of Sports coverage in the Triangle area, especially in the area of High School athletics. Most of the area papers have reduced their sections so drastically, that High School sports have virtually no coverage compared to years past. Seasoned journalists could seize such a perfect opportunity and publish their own small town publication, or even a simple blog which could provide the coverage that consumers demand in that specific field of local journalism. In time, and the right usage of social media best practices, this small publication could attract enough online traffic and notoriety that larger news organizations could utilize the traffic and content from such a blog, and integrate it into their media on a third-party vendor/contractor basis.
The key to such a concept is simple: Personal Branding, Quality Content, and Effective and Streamlined Social Media Best Practices.
Written By:
James C. Wong, Co-Founder & General Partner of Empowered Ideas
In a world of highly integrated, yet segmented internet usage and behavior, today’s email marketers must be more in tune with their email contacts than ever before. This of course presents an all too real problem for most marketing teams, because email is a channel that has received much negative publicity in regards to spam.
However, email remains nonetheless, one of the most viable and critical communication channels for today’s marketing professional.
Why and How Has Email Remained So Popular?
With the advent of new communications technologies focused around social media interactions like Twitter and Facebook, many internet users have flocked to these various channels to receive and distribute bite-sized bits of information. The information exchanged is much more concentrated and distributed in snapshots, as compared to emailed content.
Regardless of which communication channels your contacts choose to utilize, one fact remains strong among all of those networks – they all require a valid email address to sign up.
Besides being a low-level security verification channel, email has become more than just a simple communication channel, but has matured into a hub that connects all of a person’s social media activities. Through email notifications, a user’s email inbox notifies the individual of Facebook message, comment, and friend requests. It notifies the individual of Twitter activity and requests, and replicates the same resource to hundreds of thousands of various online social networks and communities. Ultimately, all of that data gets redirected into an individual’s inbox. Not to mention the simple fact that you can’t send attachments via any other “social media” channel.
What Email Marketers Should Be Doing
Marketing professionals should be tapping into the wealth of data waiting just beyond their email lists. Each of their email contacts could potentially be a member of various online social networks, and in today’s inter-connected world, it’s vital that marketers discover to which networks and communities their members belong.
Using simple email surveys can reveal a flood of information about their contact’s behavior, interest and communications habits. Analyzing this data will identify key networks and communities that you should be targeting, and which networks you could be leveraging for your marketing efforts.
The key is that every social network and community has its own unique niche. Researching and understanding why your contacts are on certain networks over others will provide you with insight into their interests and behaviors, which may prove to impact their buying behaviors as well.
Email marketers should view email as a two-way communications channel, and start listening to their contacts. Marketers need to document and respond to feedback, and be as transparent as possible. Collecting contact behavior and network preference data will better prepare marketers to engage in meaningful and educated discussions with their contacts.
