Conference Buddies

How to Sell to Niche Markets Online

How to Market to Baby Boomers:

Panelist: Ali Moiz , COO, Peanut Labs Media, Virtual Currency Specialist

• Virtual currency is a new market, valued at $2 billion
• Baby Boomers are born between 1946 to 1964
• They have the highest income bracket
• Spends more than other age groups, especially in travel
• Fastest growing group of social networks users
• $1.2 billion in custom-sample market in 2008
• Fastest growing section of online gamers
• Only 5% to 15% are monetizing for gamers
• Example: Zombieland movie, finding a good trailer for that movie can generate $2 million more. Tested on baby boomers to find which trailer out of three they liked the best, used that one for the campaign
• Biggest segment of baby boomers make over $50,000 to $125,000 per year
• Commonly played online games for baby boomers: free to play (Yahoo! Games), casual games (Facebook, MySpace), Massively Multiplayer Games (MMO’s), downloadable games, virtual worlds, it’s a $1.5 billion market
• Baby boomer spend on average 7 hours a week playing online games
• Plays eight or more online games at the same time
• Works full time
• 23% are paying for online games
• 24% are buying goods online
• 14% pay for premium content online
• 18% watch ad-supported free streaming (i.e.Hulu)
• CPM’s generated online dollars

How to Market to Teens Online:

Panelist: Daniel Brusilovsky, 16-year-old CEO, Teens & Techs Networks, writes for Tech Crunch, Marketing Manager for Quick (iPhone apps)
Daniel@danielbru.com
www.danielbru.com
Twitter.com/danielbru

• Teens & Techs conference inspires teens to start their own business
• Second Life, a teen community
• Social media advertising: target teens.
• Why teens like Facebook: it’s simple to use, easy to understand, communication with friends (Facebook chat) helps each other with homework.
• Why teens don’t like Twitter: their media content, the open platform creates mistrust
• Why teens don’t like MySpace: too cluttered, but good for bands to upload their audio, too many Ads, it’s old news
• Print advertising is strong in schools because of the school newspaper
• Print Ads work for teens: people will read it, make it interesting
• eCommerce: teens like to buy clothes online, like to use Zappos and Amazon. Use eCommerce to your advantage. Integrate all your social media marketing to eCommerce
• If something doesn’t work, try something new. Teens are used to changes and are open-minded.

Questions from audience:

1) Why isn’t your school’s newsletter online? Daniel: It is, but it sucks
2) What is the return rate from teens buying online? Daniel: Zappos is a great example: easy returns, good customer service
3) What is the next big thing after Facebook? Daniel: It’s too soon to tell, but keep a look out for mobile, especially in social networking.
4) Where else are the baby boomers? Ali: They are also big on eCommerce, they search for news a lot, and they like informational sites
5) How can you sell to teens online when they don’t have credit cards? Daniel: get a link to your parents’ credit card, get PayPal. Ali: try Bill My Parents website
6) What is your favorite fan page on Facebook? Daniel: None, Ali: Just trying to avoid my mom on Facebook
7) Do kids influence their parents’ eCommerce activities? Ali: eCommerce will expand through friends’ recommendation. Daniel: Apple has a great example, influences kids to beg their parents for their products.
8) What’s the market for smartphone apps? Ali: Digital Chocolate, a company that is betting their market on smartphones, gaming is becoming huge on phones. Daniel: a flip phone is uncommon, most devices have internet access now
9) What’s a good online search for baby boomers’ buying trends without paying too much? Ali: check blogs, check Think Equity, a research firm. Compete.com and Quantcast.com
10) If I want to sell SAT study guides, who should I market to? Daniel: to the teens, the teens will want it, event thought the parents are buying it.
11) Are there more stats on baby boomers? Ollie: yes, more women are playing games online than men. (65% to 35%)
12) Is e-mail marketing effective on teens? Daniel: no, teens are not using email anymore.

How to Build a Business Brand on Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook, & Google
Moderator: Shawna Causey, Comcast Business Class

Google

Panelist: Ryan Hayward, Product Development & Marketing, Local Business Center, Google

• 80% + are looking for businesses through Google & Google maps
• Business Listing is free
• Helps you get more business
• Can see a daily report of your traffic
• Anatomy of your listing on Google: Business name, business hours, description of business, photos, reviews of that business, location on Google maps and Google street view, photos are provided by the business, Google pulls info from City Search and other websites
• To optimize your business on Google: add photos, keep all info up to date, add a thorough business description, select all appropriate categories and describe specific products sold, give unique details and use specific keywords
• google.com/lbc, add your business, verify that it’s really your business

Yelp

Panelist: Michelle Broderick, Marketing Director, Yelp, Seattle, michelle.yelp.com

• How Yelp can help your business: to connect people to great local businesses
• 20 to 25 million people coming to Yelp monthly
• 5 million local reviews
• 85% of reviews are positive
• Make sure you claim your page
• Connect with your reviewers for free to respond to reviewers
• Flesh out you business page, put in your promos, put a photo, about your business
• Make sure your business is engaging

Facebook

Panelist: Hazel Grace Dircksen, Founder, Socialbees, Silicon Valley, @socialbees, Facebook.com/socialbees

• Helps small businesses develop a social presence on Facebook
• 300 million people on Facebook
• 10 million are connecting with businesses
• Use a Facebook page instead of a Newsletter
• Create a custom tab for ads
• Make it fun, engage and connect with your fans

Questions from the moderator:

1) How do you get started on getting listed on Google? Ryan: Check for your own business on Google, see what’s on there already.
2) How do you set up your business on Yelp? Michelle: Go to yelp.com/business, unlock your business page, join the conversation about once a week, put your URL in, add fun facts about your business, how and why you started your business,
3) How do you set up your business on Facebook? Hazel Grace: Start with a personal profile, then add a fan page (for businesses) by clicking on the advertising button at the bottom or join/start a group.
4) Give an example of a successful viral campaign on Facebook. Hazel Grace: Feel your Boobies, an organization that promotes breast cancer awareness.
5) Give an example of a successful campaign on Yelp. Michelle: A café business blew up a gigantic sign of Yelp and stuck it in her window, people asked her about it, and she explains that she’s well-loved on Yelp. She has all her specials and promos on it.
6) Give an example of a successful campaign on Google. Ryan: A 12-location business was on the verge of bankruptcy. Employee used Google Analytics & enhanced content on Google, business started to flourish. She became the manager of all 12 locations.
7) What kind of data/statistics do you see on Google? Ryan: How many times your business was viewed by people, how many people clicked on your website, from what zip codes people are looking for you, Google alerts you on when your business is mentioned, Google Adwords can promote your business.
8) What stats do you get from Yelp? Michelle: How many people viewed your page, an alert every time you get reviewed, check feedback from all reviews to get data.
9) What stats do you get from Facebook? Hazel Grace: Demographics of fans, how they interact with your business, who’s interacting with your business, compare yourself with other fan pages, see what people are saying about you.
10) What’s next for Google? Ryan: Local Business Center: more enhancements on data collected, more info on how to use your data, more social aspects
11) What’s next for Yelp? Michelle: International focus, launched UK and Canada, mobile
12) What’s next for Facebook? Hazel Grace: Fan pages to replace company newsletters, local business focus, new iPhone update.
13) One thing businesses are doing wrong?
Hazel Grace: Facebook: businesses abandon their fan pages, no new updates or flair, overusing and double posting.
Michelle: Yelp: abandoning their profile, come across too desperate, faking their own reviews.
Ryan: Google: outdated data, not having enough content.

Question from audience via Twitter:

How do you use these channels to connect with B2B? Build a community of people that are looking for your type of business, make sure you are connected because business owners need services/products, too. Not too different from B2C.

State of the Medical Blogosphere

Speakers: Kerri Morrone Sparling: www.sixuntilme.com
Kevin Pho: www.kevinmd.com
Nicholas Genes: www.medgadget.com, www.blogborygmi.com
Kim McAllister: www.emergiblog.com
10/15/2009, 9:45am – 10:45am

Evolution of the Medical Blogosphere

• 60% of patients use the internet as their first source of information
• Doctors need to get on board to connect with their patients, answer questions about medical news and new medical info
• Patients are blogging about their experiences as a way to find other people like them
• People are leaving the Blogosphere due to privacy and employer issues
• Issues with patient privacy when doctors blog, new parameters as to what doctors can and cannot share emerged
• Social media presence is essential for all doctors stay relevant and credible
• Patient blogging can help other patients with managing their diseases (shared experiences, what to expect, medication reactions doctors didn’t mention but many people experience, how to administer your meds in the least painful way)
• Social and mainstream media will someday merge into one entity
• Very few people read medical blogs, blogging is a way to get into mainstream publications
• FTC is looking at blogging and full disclosure, bloggers must share whether they are being compensated for writing their blog
• If you are only on Facebook or Twitter, you might not be connecting with your audience. Being on different social networks allow you to connect with people who might be interested in you but does not participate in all the social networks
• Being a patient blogger allows you to connect with other people who have the same condition as you do

Questions & Answers

How can medical companies blog without violating FTC and FDA regulations and still get the word out on their products?
Independent bloggers have more freedom to say what they feel without worrying about that. They can link to the medical devices pages, or the companies can get the blogger to link to them

10 Ways to Build Your Audience
Speaker: Nicole Simon, Social Media Mentor & Consultant, @nicolesimon
10/17/2009, 12:45 to 1:15pm

Four different types of visitors:

• Subscribers, (people who already love you)
• Search engine traffic, (they don’t know you)
• Life stream (people come for specific reasons, people pointed others to it)
• Social bookmarking (people who find you interesting)

Other traffic:

• People who want to contact you (journalists)
• People who want to offer you something (other bloggers)
• People who want information from you

Big Questions:

• What do each of these segments want from you and your site? They are all different!
• What do you have to do to help them get what they want?
• What makes me happy?
• What helps me to get what I want?
• What can I do to make me happy?

Learn and Transfer:

• Switch mindset
• Start thinking, “what can I get out of it”
• Know what you don’t know
• Build a support group
• Use examples from BlogWorld sessions, look through the classes offered, try to guess what would be discussed
• Get inspired: learn from others and take notes

1. Think Professional Media:

• If you write like you are advertising something, no one would read it
• Use an editorial calendar: have a plan that helps you to prepare content
• Can you do partnerships? Do you have something to offer them?

2. Cover the Basics:

• Is your blog in the search engines?
• Use a sitemap, use Webmaster tools

3. Work Like a Professional

• Use tools of the trade
• Research and use what works for you
• Buy books and information to learn in the shortest amount of time

4. Think Work Flow & Procedures

• Make a list of things you need to work through without thinking
• What can be outsourced?
• How much time does it take?
• Can you optimize?
• Which tools work for me? Not all tools work for everyone

The Conversation Prism

• theconversationprism.org, get the rough idea of what others are doing
• Engage with your audience, be where your audience are

5. Think Stumble Upon:

• If I see something for the first time, why should I give you a thumbs up or tweet about you?
• Use other pages to gather what you like when you stumble them yourself
• If people come to your article on StumbleUpon, what do they see? What would they know about your blog? Exponential potential for growth.

6. Think Twitter:

• Think in titles which are re-tweetable
• 120 is the new 140. Stop at 120 so people can retweet you without having to edit it
• Can I easily see your twitter name?
• What is your content about?
• Will others have a reason to point to your blog?
• Think landing page, see what people link to so you know what people are interested in
• Think research, networking, and what other people click on

7. Think Offline:

• Look at people next to you & around you, how can you connect with them?
• Point to offline material

8. Think Newsletter:

• What can you provide to newsletter authors?
• What content do you deliver in exchange for visibility and feedback?
• How can I contact you?
• What are you best articles?
• Search for your niche

9. Think Facebook:

• Doesn’t work for everyone
• Think of it as another professional tool
• Know how to use the Fan Page and how it can connect to the rest of your blog or site
• Put HTML pages and images into it
• FBML pages

10. Stop Thinking A-Listers:

• Like “Dancing with the Stars”, they are not A-Listers, but the show is successful
• Learn mechanisms, they teach you the steps, but you need to learn the music
• Trust in yourself: learn & evolve

Bonus: Pay It Forward

• Get in the habit retweets, relink, & Bookmarks
• Forward interesting information to others
• Honor others who make your life easier
• Give feedback & state what you like and missed
• If I make others happy, they will make me happy
• Think of one person you can send information from BlogWorld, if you can explain it, then you understand it
• Give freely from your heart and not brag about it

Facebook & Twitter Fortunes: How To Strategically Grow Your Business Using the Top Two Online Social Networks

Panelist(s): Mari Smith
@marismith

Facebook:

Facebook Mission: To help the world connect & communicate more effectively.

For social media, it is important to know the difference between a Facebook personal page and a Facebook fan page. Facebook personal pages have a limit of 5000 friends but fan pages do not have such a limitation. Fan pages are also fully indexed by Google. Personal pages do not have any requirements to get a shortened vanity Facebook URL. However, fan pages require at least 25 fans (initially it was 1000, then 100) in order to register for one.

Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, who you follow is as important as who follows you. One rule of thumb to go by is, follow people that have “passion”. Also, it is important to always thank people who retweet your content.

Social Media and What It’s About

It’s about people who are looking for connections. It’s not what you say, it’s the intent of what you say. An important aspect for companies is to remember is to let people be heard, seen, engaged (like Zappos, Comcast, and Virgin).

Changing Interactions

Social media has altered the way companies interact with customers and the community.

1. From : Controlling Our Image” to “being Ourselves”

Personal and Professional lines are blurring

2. From “Hard to Reach” to “Available Everywhere”

300M active members

Facebook = 2nd most trafficked website in the world
70% of FB users are ouside us
Average age of more than 35
50% more active on mobile

90% of social media is about showing up. Make content available to your fans and your fans will do all the rest.

Social Media Barriers

Even though social media has grown signficantly, there are still some barriers for marketing. Mainly, there is a lack of an easy method to measure ROI (from Marking Sherpa).If you can’t measure your Social Media results, you don’ have a proven strategy.

Mari’s Four-Part Formula

Quality NETWORK
High influencial in your industry
+
Quality CONTENT
Relevant, frequency, and focus
+
Consistency

Social Media Success Stories – BlogWorld Expo 2009

Speakers:

Samantha Gammell (Oscar Mayer / Kraft), Justin Levy (Caminito Argentinean Steakhose), Brian Wiegand, Frank Eliason

This session explores Social Media case studies and success stories

Frank Eliason
Comcast Cares

• Twitter handle: @comcastcares
• Passionate not about products, passionate about customers
• Passion is important
• Look at Zappos, passionate about company culture, employees, brand, and passionate about customers!  or Gary V being passionate about wine.
• Tie results to purchases
• One Tweet Resolution = resolve problems quickly

Facebook = great place  to meet with people you already know

Facebook = not a great place to meet people you don’t already know (compared to Twitter)

Samantha Gammell
Oscar Mayer / Kraft

• Better engage consumers and expand customer interaction
• Weingermobile has been around for 22 years
• Using HotDoggerBlog.com as a microsite to engage customers
• 20,000 visitors a month
• 2600 followers on twitter (@HotDogger / @Wienermobile)
• Good traffic to their YouTube page too
• Great sentiment, people love the WeinerMobile!

Justin Levy
Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse

• Partner in a Steakhouse in Boston
• Initially losing 10% to 20% a month
• Justin’s Chef/partner spent 80% on marketing budget on small town newspaper
• Targeted Google = Up 20% in profits (actually up 40% to overcome 20% loss)
• Targeted Google SEO = Up 20% in profits

Brian Wiegand

JellyFish.com

• 18 months only, 100% social media, no paid advertising, sold to Microsoft

Alice.com

• Launched 15 weeks ago
• Sell Toilet Paper and everyday essentials online (You wouldn’t think but there is a lot of energy around these products, but there is!)
• Prices are the same as Walmart
• Always free shipping, combined with a Netflix feel
• Gather Social Data: i.e. She’s a great mother, what type of diapers she uses; She’s beautiful what type of make up does she uses
• Reach out to Mommy Bloggers

Panel Q&A:

• Be the first, the leader of an industry
• Comcast, Dell, Cirque = great examples
• Social Media = Humanize your brand
• Don’t just create corporate policies, but also provide tools, rules and methods for your employees to deal with Social Media
• My job isn’t to build Twitter – My job is to meet customers where they already are
• Go to where your community is already are

If you could do over:

Brian Wiegand:

Hire a little better, who already understand social media (more experience and knowledge – not everyone is a fit, don’t force it.)

Samantha Gammell:

Make sure you have the resources and people.  If you start, you can’t stop.  Make sure you have the time and money to staff it.

Justin Levy:

Wished we used Twitter, like KojiBBQ, tweet events, locations, drive customers

Frank  Eliason:

Frank’s only statement was to ask everyone to use  the #beatcancer hastag 6pm today to support the cause.
[Note: as a result of all the organizers, speakers, attendees and supporters of BlogWorld Expo, the hash tag #beatcancer not only raised money but also helped make this initiative reach a world record at #bwe09 for largest social media push in in a 24 hour period!]