Monthly Archives: June 2010

I arrived at 30 Rock this afternoon in time to join our afternoon editorial meeting in progress—and I noticed something on the bottom of my shoe: oil. Continue reading →

This week, Yelp announced the inclusion of mobile activity tracking to its weekly summary for small businesses that use Yelp’s free business tools.

The new addition came after Yelp disclosed some interesting statistics a few weeks ago about Yelp use, which revealed that over 1 in 4 searches on Yelp are performed from Yelp’s iPhone application, and every five seconds, someone uses the Yelp app to call a local business.  Pretty interesting, considering these stats were generated just from Yelp’s iPhone app, and Yelp also has applications for 4 other smart phones.

Now, weekly summary emails that are already sent to small businesses that use Yelp’s business tools (like the one pictured above) also include the following mobile activity information:

• How many people looked at the business’ page from their Yelp app
• How many people called the business from their Yelp app
• How many people generated directions to the business from their Yelp app
• How many people “checked in” to the business via the Yelp app

Why This Matters for Marketers and Small Business Owners

The availability of these mobile stats means marketers and small business owners now have access to more in-depth data regarding the impact of their Yelp presence.  As local search and mobile applications increases in popularity and usage, the ability to gain insight into how people are searching for local businesses using these types of search tools is becoming more and more valuable. Knowing this data can help small businesses make decisions on how best to take advantage of their local search presence. 

This should also serve as a wakeup call for small businesses who aren’t already taking advantage of local business directories, review sites and mobile applications such as Yelp and Google Places (formerly called Google Local).  People are increasingly using these tools to find and evaluate businesses like yours all the time.  If you haven’t claimed your presence on these sites, you’re missing a huge opportunity to get found online by local searchers.  You can easily unlock your free business tools on Yelp here and claim your Google Place here. 

So what are you waiting for?

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The following is a guest post by Danny Wong, the co-founder of Blank Label, an ecommerce startup specializing in custom men’s dress shirts.

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(This is an opinion piece. Feel free to debate in the comments.) The advice of all the social media gurus these days seems to be that every company needs a social media policy.  I get asked about it a lot, people want examples of them and ideas on how to create and implement one.

And over the past couple years there has been a lot of discussion and writing in marketing blogs about it: David Meerman Scott has written about the Department of Defense’s policy, Todd Defren wrote about social media policies recently, Tamara Schweitzer gave some tips on Inc.com, Charlene Li of Altimeter create a resource, Sharlyn Lauby blogged on Mashable, Beth Kanter wrote Got Social Media Policy?, and Jason Falls wrote What Every Company Should Know About Social Media Policy.  I’m sure I missed a ton of others, let me know if there are big ones missing.

In all this discussion, I always felt uncomfortable telling people to create a social media policy.  We don’t have a social media policy at HubSpot.  But I didn’t want to recommend something against common wisdom for fear of getting virtually wacked by the social media mafia.

But, enough is enough.  Let’s end the madness today.

Social Media Policies are Unnecessary and Distracting

I don’t think companies need a social media policy.  In fact, having a specific social media policy runs counter to the whole point of marketing and customer service.  No single channel of interaction is more important than others.  Social media is not something weird or different, it is just one of many ways your company interacts with people.  Giving social media its own policy implies that phone, email and in-person interactions are not important or less important.  If a customer sends you a message by carrier pigeon – dammit you should answer – even if you don’t have a “fowl messaging policy”.

For example, if you have a store and a customer complains to a cashier about something, and your cashier yells at the customer telling her she is wrong, you’d fire the cashier on the spot.  Same thing if that happens on the phone or email.  No “policy” needed.  It just makes sense that you treat customer right.  You don’t have a “voice media policy” or an “email communication policy”.  And I say that if that same interaction happened on Yelp or Facebook, you should fire them too.  Even without a policy.

In the B2B world, if you saw one of your employees drunk at a tradeshow and they said a bunch of disparaging things about a customer you’d probably fire them.  Again, no policy required.  So why is that different if they get a little tipsy and tweet something insulting about a customer?  It’s not.

I think the best “policy” is to hire smart people, give them the right coaching and training, set the correct culture around customer interaction, and then punish those who misbehave.

Rather than having a social media policy, if you feel like your company needs something, how about creating a communication policy that governs all communication, no matter what medium.

Your thoughts on a social media policy?  Leave a comment below.

Photo Credit: bookgrl

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MarketingSherpa’s brand-spanking-new report on search marketing yields some interesting findings.  In this chart, 36% of those surveyed (HubSpot is a research partner for the 2010-2011 Report), did NOT integrate their social media with their SEO work. 

How odd is that?

According to Jen Doyle, the lead author of this book, “Most of the companies that take advantage of using social media and SEO are those with less than 100 employees.  Actually, 70% of the companies with <100 employees answered yes to this question.  The other 30% might want to consider this tactic in their search engine marketing plans, because it seems that the smaller company may be more marketing agile than their larger counterparts and able to make SEO campaign modifications quickly.”

Small company respondents did not include Search Marketing agencies or individuals that do not participate in their company’s SEO practices.

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After the fall of the Empire, it was pretty tough for Stormtroopers to find new jobs. What skills could they offer potential employers? How would they affect the company culture?

Help the Stormtroopers. Watch the video.

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“Unemployed Stormtroopers”

Producer and Director: @WoodyTondorf 
Featured HubSpotters: @prsutherland, @ellieeille, @karenrubin, @amyeastment, Becky Garber @inboundbeale

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LinkedIn is a social networking site that has rapidly gained popularity among professionals looking to connect with contacts, colleagues, and potential employers. Recently passing 70 million members, LinkedIn has become one of the most popular social media tools along with Facebook and Twitter.

How do you use LinkedIn?

Here are some facts and statistics about LinkedIn that illustrate how the network is used:

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Inbound marketing assumes that people will come to you because you are providing them valuable, even remarkable content.  What then, is remarkable content?  Put simply, by social media and marketing expert Seth Godin during a recent Boston event, “… remarkable is something that other people find interesting enough to remark upon.”

Easy, right?

Ok, maybe not that easy – but ultimately, your brain and your creativity are the only bounds to the quality of your content and how remarkable it is to your target audience, and possibly beyond.

In different industries and situations, remarkable may look like one of the following:

• Having a CXO engaging personally on a blog or site in a very staid organization
• Sharing a strong opinion on an industry ‘elephant in the room’
• Publishing funny music, videos or cartoons (Humor can drive ROI)
• Creating an award and nominating suppliers or customers in a category
• Publishing pricing when no other competitors share that information

Only you know your audience well enough to know what is out of the norm or what information they crave and therefore could be remarkable to them. 

Take an example from the sporting industry.  Inbound marketer Charlie King recently launched his Campaign for President … Campaign for President of Golf Instruction that is.

Charlie already had an existing website at Reynold’s Golf Academy.  It’s a great site, with excellent golf advice, high quality videos, offers and calls to action.  But Charlie wanted to make a splash in an industry that can stand to have a little more fun – I mean it’s a pastime for goodness sake.  Let’s loosen up!

After customers told him he was so passionate about it that he sounded like he was running for office, Charlie literally bought the domain http://charliekingforpresident.com.  His campaign site is chock full of creative videos like the one of Charlie being interviewed by a GNN, Golf News Network, reporter or like his endorsement by funny man and golf student Steve Harvey.  He’s used imagery and a style reminiscent of a classical political campaign that lets him share his platform for candidacy – The New Rules of Golf a new method of golf instruction – with his constituents.

Now I may not have an election for the President of Golf Instruction coming up in a jurisdiction near me, but, Charlie did get a lot of interesting inbound links and buzz in the golf press, where his potential customers are found.  And you know, if I were new to golf, I’d want to work with someone who is both skilled and fun – Charlie proved it with his presidential campaign.

What tips can we extrapolate from Charlie’s experiment?

1. Stand for something.  Charlie’s New Rules of Golf turn the old way of teaching golf on its head.  There are probably golf pros all over telling people he doesn’t know what he is talking about, but he believes there is truly a better way – and he is telling people about it.  Is your industry ready for a shake-up?  Are you willing to address an unpopular problem?  If you answered yes, then tell the world about it – someone is probably looking for your idea, solution or content – because it is remarkable to them.
2. Take a risk.  Different can be good.  I doubt any other golf pro has ever run for a fictitious office.  That’s ok.  I doubt any other golf pro has as many people spreading content online about them either.  At very worst, Charlie spent some time and effort creating content, but he hasn’t ruined a reputation or done anything that could ‘blow up’.  At very best, Charlie’s content and ideas will spread and he’ll be so overwhelmed with fans and leads that he’ll have to grow his staff and go on a speaking circuit.  That’s the outcome I hope for him.  Think through your worst case and decide if it would really be so bad.  If not, then do something different, for people may find it remarkable.
3. Know your audience.  Charlie picked something that would be easily understood by all the people he interacts with, be they other golf pros or total amateurs.  Using common vernacular and a medium that a lot of golfers use, video, he created something that could appeal to all of them.  He could have chosen to go into technical detail or a lot of instructional jargon, but like a savvy politician, he kept it high level and stayed on message.  He appealed to his audience in a way that they would groc and find remarkable.
4. Engage people’s creativity.  This may be the hardest part of Charlie’s exercise.  When you first get to the site, it takes you a second to get what is happening.  Then, just like with a good movie trailer, you suspend disbelief for just one moment and get immersed in the idea.  I spent a good twenty minutes actually looking at and enjoying the videos on the campaign site.  While I chuckled a bit, I stayed and I learned what Charlie was all about.  Sure some folks might move on, but don’t underestimate that some audiences enjoy using other parts of their brain than pure logic and may in fact find it remarkable enough to share with friends or colleagues.

What idea have you been toying with but just haven’t pulled the trigger?  Do it now, try to create something remarkable and find out what gets your audience engaged!  Then, tell us all about it.

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