The Product is You. Managing your Career in a Social-Centric World

By Mark Helfen

PLEASE NOTE: THIS MONTH THERE IS A ONE TIME CHANGE IN MEETING LOCATION. 

Our January meeting will be at EMC on 2441 Mission College Blvd in Santa Clara. This set of buildings is on the other side of Great America Parkway from where we normally meet, right near the Marriott. Back to normal next month......
 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least in terms of the core elements of your marketing strategy. Some people think that technology, particularly social media, has changed everything, but these only changes the tactics. The key questions - what makes your product better, and who will care - still need clear answers.

At next Monday's SVForum MarketingSIG meeting, the focus won't be on marketing systems or software, instead the product will be you.

Linda Popky will speak on the topic Marketing Brand You: Managing Your Career/Business in a Social-Centric World. Popky is founder and President of Leverage2Market Associates, a marketing consultancy that helps companies of all sizes, startup to Fortune 500. Part of her business is to help and mentor individual consultants in improving their personal brand and business marketing - she is a Certified Master Mentor. In addition to her consulting practice, she is an instructor in marketing as Cal State San Francisco, and was part of the team that designed a new certificate program in Social Media Marketing.

Her 2009 book is titled Marketing Your Career: Positioning, Packaging and Promoting Yourself for Success, which would seem to be about her topic on Monday. Available here or here.

b-to-b social media. Harder than it looks....

By Mark Helfen

Social media has become something of a code word that can mean many things. A way of keeping personal connections. Networking with professional associates. Keeping up with the news.

Not to limit to using Facebook. Twitter has become a way to both keep in touch, communicate, and sell a brand or product. LinkedIn for business connections.

But in addition to person-to-person connection, Facebook in particular has become a way to manage a brand, promote and generate consumer interest, and just plain old sell stuff to consumers.

But what about business-to-business? Not only selling, but also communicating with everyone in your sales channel, keeping people informed, motivated, and helping their success. And yours.

What's Hot, What's Not - in Mobile Marketing

By Mark Helfen

Marketeers seem to have a wealth of new ways to reach their market. In fact, so many ways that the technology seems to be well outpacing a clear marketing understanding of how to use the tools and the data. And how to spend money wisely.

Last month the topic was social media engagement via Facebook, with a presentation by Justin Kistner of Webtrends.

This month's MarketingSIG meeting - Monday November 14 - will be a panel on using mobile technology to reach your market. And as you will learn, the abundance of new tools, channels, and information sources is only matched by the new questions that are raised.

The panel discussion is titled What's Hot, What's Not - in Mobile Marketing. I spoke to moderator Giovanni Rodriguez. Rodriguez has the title Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Deloitte Postdigital Enterprise , and is a contributor at Forbes.com. You can see his latest blog posting here.

Rodriguez listed four questions that the panel will address:

Trust:
Mobile devices give businesses the opportunity to collect lots of new data. As two examples, smart phones add location data to the mix of other types of information a company will know about you. Advertisers can also develop applications that supply value to customers, but also collect data at the same time. For many people, they're smart phones are always on - people even sleep next to them. Maybe even more so than a laptop or desk side system, smart phones seem to be a personal part of people's lives.

Until you have squeezed significant value from Facebook, forget all the other social marketing channels.

By Mark Helfen

Social media marketing is all Facebook. Forget the others.

Or so says Justin Kistner, speaker at the next SVForum MarketingSIG meeting, October 10 at our regular place, EMC. His topic will be Feeding the Beast - Taking Advantage of Facebook's New Marketing Opportunities.

Kistner is Director of Social Products at Webtrends, and was a key player in developing their Facebook Analytics products. He will be joined by Hope Frank, Webtrends Chief Marketing Officer.  Webtrends has a range of marketing and analysis products, including a free version that can be used by small startups he describes as the "Swiss army knife" or social marketing tools.

Kistner has been around the internet marketing world for a while, starting out as a blogger attempting to get noticed, eventually helping other companies with the same problem, then on to Search Engine Optimization. When Facebook first was available, he "hated" it, and compared it to the "internet on training wheels."

You would "be surprised by the degree of listening involved" in your social media strategy. You don't just "deposit information," it's a conversation

By Mark Helfen


You would "be surprised by the degree of listening involved" in your social media strategy. You don't just "deposit information," it's a conversation.

So says John Thyfault, speaker at the next MarketingSIG meeting. Thyfault is Vice President Search Engine and Social Media Marketing at Beasly Direct Marketing. His topic will be Search and Social: Making the Sum Greater Than the Parts.

The meeting will be on Monday, September 12 at our regular EMC location. Please sign up in advance on our Meetup page - a requirement of EMC security.

Thyfault has been at Beasly Direct for 5 years, originally managing their Search Engine Marketing practice. But it turns out that there is a lot of synergy between search engine optimization and using social media for promotion. Helping clients with both is his current focus.

Social Media marketing, if done properly "naturally reinforces your search engine ranking," said Thyfault. Mentions of your product or company on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin in and others increase the "social authority" of your web site, and can get noticed by Google and other search engines. The effect can be long term, or immediate. Google can "quickly pick up" mentions on social media and can change search ranking.