Blog of Ronnestam » advertising

If you wanna be my brand!

ronnestam — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:11:20 +0000

If you’re my brand: Never let me down. Keep on making me smile. Stay cool. Always surprise me. Change when you need to, but stay true to your heritage. Dress nice. Make sure I don’t have to hide our love. If you do something bad – stay honest and tell the truth cause I will forgive you. And finally! Never ever take me for granted.

Tokyo in sunrise – A Brand that didn’t let me down. Taken from my Instagram feed.

If you’ll stick to these simple guidelines – I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life with you and give you my all my love. If not – get lost!

AIDA Transformed By Digital Media. What Does It Mean To Your Brand Communication?

ronnestam — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:03:11 +0000

The other day I wrote quite a long post on the future of integrated communication from a digital perspective. I stressed the fact that in order for your brand to create and maintain strongs brand in the future you’ve gotta provide people with true values not just fun stuff that entertains. On top of that I’ve also written a quite extensive post on how all your brands belong not to you, but to the consumer. You might wanna tap into that one too before reading this post. Here we go:

You’ve lost control of almost all of your sales process. Accept it and change or die. (Had to go punk style)

That actually happens to tactical communication as we know it when all rules are changed? What happens to ads, prints, point of sale, direct marketing etc?

Let’s me elaborate on that based on an old communication model called AIDA, Attention, Information, Desire and Acquire, first described in 1898 by E. St. Elmo Lewis. Some people say it’s dead since way back. I say it’s more alive than ever but it’s transformed.It serves a great purpose when explaining to you guys and girls heading brands and companies out there how you’re supposed to rock your brands in the future.

Information, desire and acquire in the hands of the consumers

How your brand communication is changed on every level as we move into the future of communication.

A- Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer

Yesterday: Use creative advertising that intercept whatever the consumer is doing and make him/her crave your brand

Tomorrow: Here’s the good news. If you know branding, advertising and all that good stuff we’ve been doing for years. You’re in for a ride. Brands will realise that TV, Print, Outdoor, Banners – all those yummy above the line things – will rule the next 10 years. There’s simply now way to grab peoples attention but to shake them around in a medium where you cannot miss them. Of course, people say young kids does not watch TV, but they still do if it’s relevant. On top of all those old things you of course gotta get your shit together when it comes to the product. In transparent times – failure is not an option!

I – Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits.

Yesterday: When we tried to get hold of more information about products our resources were limited. Of course we could ask friends. But what were the chances of us having the exact same crave for a product. We then relied on newspapers, magazines and TV channels. Honestly. Who believes the reporter for a car magazine wasn’t bribed in one way or another when writing that excellent article about the new BMW 3 series you’re looking for. On top of that you can be sure the PR people did their best to make sure he was positive anyway unless he didn’t fall for fancy dinners and test drives accompanied with wonderful wines and spicy women in the south of spain. We even had use for the phone catalogue. That pile of paper served its purpose.

Tomorrow All changed. Let’s say the advertising agency has gotten your blood running in your veines. What’s next? Easy. Google or a status update in Facebook. And BAM – you’ve lost control. That Google search will turn up, not that brand that he or she is looking for. Instead we’ll land on review sites, price comparison sites, blogs, forums, social networks and more. The results in Google will all be based on the intelligence of the people, or at least the people that knows how to build brands for the future.

What to do: Start changing your mix. Head over to that post of mine that I mentioned above and study how to change your media mix. Build value. Make sure people benefit from linking to you. Set your prices so that Pricerunner and other comparison sites list your shop first. Spread content everywhere.

D – Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.

Yesterday: You OWNED this one. Clever managers educated clever sales people. The consumer, stuck inside your defined space where you built up a POS (point of sale) presence that made him/her crave your products. Of course you spent money on industrial design and shit. But compared to today you relied on the retail channel to do their work.

Tomorrow I OWN this one. Me and my friends. As I’m getting closer and closer to deciding upon which product I’m gonna get I ask around. What does people think, what do my friends say, comparisson sites etc.

What to do: Make sure you focus ten times more on your product development, turn your industrial design department into GOD. They should steer the entire company forward. If you’re lucky we’re coming to visit you. But like a kid, armed with her/his wishlist for Santa Claus, the consumer of tomorrow knows exactly what she/he wants and what the right price is.

A – Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

Yesterday: Let me follow you to the cashier” – Remeber this one? To break free and decide not to buy your product when been given a 30 minute sales pitch is prettyd darn hard.

Tomorrow If you’re unlucky (or lucky depending on your digital competence) you’re looking at closing the deal online. Usability, language, design, visualisation, payment processes etc etc etc. Alone behind my computer or mobile device, that’s where I’ll be. And the second I feel insecure, doesn’t find where to go next and so on, that’s the second I leave without buying anything.

What to do: Get wired. Never again hire marketing people that doesn’t know how to convert people. Change Microsoft Office into A/B testing in your hiring profile. Send your troopers back to the school. Have them learn everything there is to know about online commerce – cause you’ll need it.

Last but not least. Of course there are brands out there that doesn’t have to give a shit about this. After all, we will not buy nuclear plants for some time still over the Internet. The rest of you – get going!

Future Integrated Communication From A Digital Perspective

ronnestam — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:51:13 +0000

Leading a brand? Thinking about how to create a long term integrated communication platform? Think no more cause I’ll share the model I’ve been using for the last three years when leading brands into the future of advertising, communication and advertising.

Normally I’d work a company or brand through a series of workshops. We would then slowly start to follow this model over time. Changing how you, your brand and marketing organisation work with advertising and communication is not something you do over night. I would recommend brands to keep on doing what they do best – shoot fireworks -while slowly start to change their way of communicating their products and services from ground up.

Moving your communication into the future is also tough on your organisation as your moving from campaign based communication activities to instead building long term equity that will generate results over time. Send your entire marketing organization as well as your IT department and management team on several digital communication crash courses cause your CEO better understand what you talk about when you’re talking conversion, SEM, SEO, AdWords, H1, Keywords, Stats and shit.

Have a read. If you like what you read – get going. Change!

Here we go – The Key To Future Integrated Communication by Johan Ronnestam

The basis of your online communication platform

The first thing we’ve gotta agree upon before moving further into the model is the following: Your brand consist out of two things. The product/services you offer and the content you’ve created to explain what your product/service does. In the worst cases companies have more or less done nothing beyond publishing images of their products with accompanied product name. In the best cases they’ve done tons more. We’ll go in to this bellow. This is the essence of your communication presence online. Hopefully you’ve got this wired, however, you might actually have this presence online without owning it your selves.

Value and conversion leads to traffic and sales. Your objective and key performance indicators.

People don’t have time to read your shit. You’ve gotta provide them with a true value. After all, your products and services are nothing without the problem they solve. This is what you’ve gotta base all your hosted communication activities on.

Value first

The more value you provide your target group with, the more traffic you’ll gain. This is based on the simple principle of the link. If you keep bragging about your products without truly do something good for people you won’t earn any links. If you on the other hand share ideas, knowledge and solutions that helps your target group to be better you’ll see that people will come. Once you’ve opened up that stream of people you’ll have the opportunity to point the towards the products and services you market, the same product and services that of course can be used to do whatever you tought people to do.

Let me share one example – Michelle Phan. I started to follow this girl online already two years ago. Back then she was an independent girl who just liked to share her thoughts on how to wear make up. In November 2010, Phan became “the No. 1 most subscribed female on YouTube and the first female to reach 1 million subscribers. Michelle Phan joined Youtube on July 18, 2006, and as of November 2010, she has created 100 videos that have been viewed over 260,000,000 times. The one where she does a Lady Gaga makeup has a stunning 23,457,472 views.

Michelle Phan sharing the value people want

Michelle does what the traditional make up brand don’t. She shares value. While Michelle teaches young women all over the world how to do their make up, brands like Chanel, Biotherm, Clinique, Loreal and Lancome does one thing – sell sell sell. Michelle shares knowledge while these brands just throws a pretty girl in your face saying “you can look like me”. No wonder Lancome suddenly this year in February turned Michelle into their spokesperson. Today Michelle even got her own make up brand.

So, value first. Before selling. Make sure you think about your reason for being. Do you sell football shoes, teach people how to score, do you sell wine, teach people how to buy the right wine (like Gary Vaynerchuck does), do you sell cars, teach them about how to drive better and more cost effective, do you sell clothes, teach them how to style themselves.

The content you create should of course go social

Once you’ve decided how to provide your potential visitor with a true value. Make sure you spread that value across the net whereever possible and relevant.

Your Potential Customer Is Out There – So Your Content Should Be Too

If you produce videos send them to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip and tons more. Use TubeMogul to handle the process. Your images on Flickr and others. Documents on Slideshare and Scribd. If you go live, use Livestream or Bambuser. Heck, head over to Brians and Jess3 Conversation prism and do the homework.

Once you got that value right – focus on conversion

So, this is the next step where tons of brands go wrong (as I’ve written about before). They simply haven’t got their conversion wired. In order for you to really know what you’re doing you’ve gotta set your targets right. Do you want people to buy online, should they download your product sheets, contact you or maybe just spend five minutes with your products online? Anything is right as long as it suits your needs. Once you’ve got that wired, set up your funnels right in your stat tools and start working those A/B tests. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING should serve a purpose if you’re looking to convert those visitors of yours to clients.

The funny thing is that once you start eyeing those performance metrics of yours you’ll end up getting insights about your traffic that you can never learn from anyone else. Business online is all about knowing your own audience and constantly improving your site. After all, a banner or button in the wrong place might kill your conversion or increase it by 400%.

5 things you can never forget when converting your site visitors into buyers

1. Usability is key

Usability is by far the most important thing to think about when you’re looking to convert your visitors into buyers. This means no funky animations, links should be easy to click on, preferably underlined, less is more, guide your visitors etc etc.

There’s tons that has been written about this area. Whatever you do, don’t buy any bullshit that people click thru a site if it’s cool. Ask anyone who’s been working with e-commerce and they’ll tell you. Why do you think Amazon looks the way it does? Go ahead and follow some blogs and you’ll be up and running in no time. Start with The UX Booth.

2. Product presentation

I don’t know if you read my post about the car brand SAAB the other day. Well, this recording below (excuse my bad english in this one) was actually done for this post. It got me worked up though and that’s why I posted that other thing the before this one.

We’re alone when surfing the web – compare that to the real world where a sales man is following us around in the store, always ready to answer any questions we might have, we’re all alone on the web. This means information, information, information, information and more information. If I’m looking to be convinced to buy a car online I’ll tell you right away – I wont be pleased with a freakin flash site that sings a song and let me rotate the car once. I want at least forty-five 60-second movies showcasing everything there is to know about your car. I want photos, not 5 wonderful photos taken by Europes most expensive photographer. I want 100+ photos that are showing that car from every angle. Of course you should package it all beautiful, but don’t have me loading any animations and shit.

Then, only then might I go to that buy button. Remember, your competitors are one click away!

3. Copy
Copy actually do matter. Write it good, write it well, but remember what I talked about in nr 2. I’m alone, so don’t go wasting to much of my time! I was planning to write a longer piece about this, but Smashing Magazine has done a great job already. Go there ›› (thanks Per for the tip)

4. Feeling secure
Logos from payment providers and other things like awards and shit. That’ll do the trick. After all. We’ve been monkeys in an earlier lifetime.

5. Faces
This might sound funny. But a face looking straight at you actually has proven to do good. Make sure you online presence contain humas, preferably not from actors, but instead from humans that you might actually meet in your office. Hire a great photographer and do them good!

So where does the traffic come from?

I have focused here on writing about prospects and not existing customers. Given that I’ve listed 4 traffic sources that more or less are the same for any company with an online presence. Above and below the line advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization and finally social media.

Above and below the line advertising

Here’s the good news. If you know branding, advertising and all that good stuff we’ve been doing for years. You’re in for a ride. Brands will realize that TV, Print, Outdoor, Banners – all those yummy above the line things – will rule the next 10 years. There’s simply now way to grab peoples attention but to shake them around in a medium where you cannot miss them. Of course, people say young kids does not watch TV, but the still do if it’s relevant. After all we’re pretty alone behind that screen when it’s time to click something. Being friend with a brand will help!

Search and The Social Internet – They go together like birds, bees, the flowers and the trees.

There’s two ways to pull traffic through search.

1. Adwords, at first glance it’s easy. However, if you’re running a business with mature competitors, say for example online travel it will be everything from easy. You’ve gotta get down with how to get your brand visible in the paid search areas. Either you know how or you start to study hard. Read books, books and more books. Then start to follow some of the high profile SEO bloggers in the world. Why not start with Seomoz, Searchengineland and Greywolfs SEO blog. Some Swedes I’d ad to the list are Jesper Åström, Nikke Lindqvist and Simon.

2. Search. The second way to get yourselves visible in the search engines is of course the SEO side of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people go on about their blog and the fact that it doesn’t drive traffic. But hey, it’s not that simple. If you’ve got a blog present, the chance is that other bloggers or maybe even a newspaper links to that blog. In the long run this will do good for your presence in search engines.

(I know I know I know…affiliates, banners, bought links etc etc. I just don’t have time to go into all of that now. This post is a top level post)

Conclusion.

Future communication is all about relevance. Relevant product, relevant services, relevant content and advertising that support those things. If you’re creating brand communication offline – fine, your only objective should be awareness and making sure people understand what your brand stands for. But when you’re communicating products and service – make sure the actual products and services are top notch and then create relevant communication that makes people search for them. If they do you’re home free! (that is if you’ve made sure to be seen everywhere online).

But worth repeating. Create advertising that make people search for your product or service category. Then by making sure your digital activities are focused on value, spread over a vast number of social networks, your AdWord campaigns and earned search positions in place you’ll make sure to get people hooked.

A qoute from Jeff Jarvis, the writer of ‘What Would Google Do‘, is in order here: “Construct information (on your website) so it can be understood by machine and man. In a word, be clear. If you’re a dentist, say you’re a dentist, not a smile doctor. Use the word “dentist” in the title of the page, the headline, and the beginning of what you write – make it so obvious even a computer couldn’t be confused. This also means that when human beings come to the page, they’ll know what you do. Clarity is always beneficial.”

So how do you get going. How do you make sure your brand platform is ‘future proof’?

Move your media budgets!

Most brands today seem to think change can be achieved within the production budgets. This is wrong. There’s just not enough money in that pot. There is only one way to make this happen. You’ve gotta take money from that eyeball highjacking fund called media and instead spend more on earned eyeballs.

Move 10% of your allocated media budget in order to gain a long term digital effect

Of course you shouldn’t move it all today. Start small but start. The next time you’re campaigning. Cut the media with 10% and start focusing on value as I wrote about earlier. Do the Michele Phan thing, whatever that means to your brand, products and services. Boom – now you’ve entered the long term value creation communication process. Keep doing it for another 6 to 12 month and make sure you track what you’re doing. You’ll see change coming your way!

Come on! You can do it!

The Social Formula For Small Business Owners

ronnestam — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:16:21 +0000

About two years ago I frantically started writing on this blog post. Then the sheer length of it got the best of me and since then it’s been stuck in my unpublished library. Now I thought it’s time to give birth to this baby even though most of it was written about two years ago, before Facebook got big, the iPad and more.

When you read it – remember I pushed publish to share the love, not the excellent writing.

This post covers how you start and run a company practically for free.

The post will guide you all the way from day one until you’re up and running and need to consider things like sales, advertising, process support, crm, intranets, extranets etc etc.

I spend about 1-2 hours a day reading about communication, advertising, social media and innovations through my Netvibes account. What’s truly amazing is the fact that almost every day a new service is launched somewhere in the world (mostly in the US) that replaces the old way to advertise, communicate with clients, run projects, process customer data, run your IT systems, keep track of your finances etc etc. And what’s even more amazing is that all these new services are practically always available free of charge or at least only for a small fee.

So I thought why not spread this knowledge to my blog readers and especially you out there who are running a company or thinking of starting one. Here are some ideas on how to think when setting up a future brand.

So, here we go – How to run your small business without loosing your pants (or the money in your pants that is)

The development within the ‘so-called’ web 2.0 services has now gone so far so it’s possible to run your company practically without any in-house IT systems. Even a larger company could without problems move everything they do online at practically no costs at all.

When you sum it all up it’s time for companies to reevaluate how to do business. Social networking and long tail services are taking over.

So, what if you were to run a company today? What’s the formula? How can you run a business without paying a dime for technology and getting social attention at the same time. Once you got that business idea of yours ready to go. Then it’s time to tell the world. And don’t worry, if you haven’t got one, there’s even resources online that give away business ideas for free.

0.9 Before you start

First thing. In terms of costs, there are two things you should prioritize over everything else and that is: 1. Broadband – get the fastest connection possible. And make sure it’s down and upstream. 2. Get a really good computer. Choose a Mac. Not because I’m against PC but because it’ll support your creativity and once it’s up and running, you’ll never have to restart it again. It just keeps running and running.

A good friend of mine told me “We’re changing our tag line. But in order to know which one to use we’re putting out Google Adwords campaigns for 10 of our finalists. The one that generates the most traffic, that will be our choice”

1. Business plan, marketing plan and a key note presentation.

Whatever you do. Make sure you put it on paper. Putting things on paper forces you to choose carefully. Put whatever you’ve written into the hands of friends and you’ll get great feedback on what you need to fine tune. Do you need inspiration? Visit slideshare.net or Scribd and then get going.

2. Register a domain.

IMPORTANT: Register your domain with the company where you intend to host your website.

IMPORTANT 2: Unless your fancy with code – don’t register with a hosting company that doesn’t have support for auto installers. I personally recommend Bluehost.com. But if you’re a Swede you might wanna check Binero out.

There are of course some other alterantives like Active 24, Bust A Name, Miss Domain and SEDO.

3. Forget expensive software.

Don’t buy software. They’re expensive. You’ll have to buy updates once a year. Instead use online softwares. Most companies need Email, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. For that I recommend Google Apps instead. Some companies may need graphical design tools. Well, then use Gimp or something like Splashup for graphical design.

Inside Google Apps you’ll provide your employees with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. On top of that Google Apps is integrated with Salesforce, something I’ll explain more about under CRM.

Gmail — Offer custom email addresses to your organization with up to 25 gigabytes of storage for each account, search tools to help people find information fast, plus instant messaging and calendar tools built right into the email interface.

Google Talk — Your users can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free — anytime, anywhere in the world. File sharing and voicemail is included, too.

Google Calendar — Your users can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others. Your organization can also publish calendars and events on the web.

Google Docs — Co-workers can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and share online files without having to keep track of multiple versions of the same attachment. And it’s all compatible with Microsoft Word.

Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites like Flickr, Picasa & Facebook, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.

Forget expensive phonecalls.
When it comes to calling, you should of course make sure you have a regular phone number. But when you do, consider IP telephony. Messenger, Rebtel & Skype

Forget conference call systems
Campfirenow and since some time back Skype allows you to hook up 5 screens at the same time.

Forget finance systems
Blinksale, Freshbooks and Billings.

Many of the other sites I’ve written about can be used dependably of where in the world your company resides. But when it comes to financial applications, you really have to find and use a local products.

Blinksale is perfect for anyone in the US who needs to invoice clients for services or products sold. Basically, if you need to send invoices, Blinksale can work for you. What’s really cool also is the fact that if you’re using some of the other online products like Basecamp and Highrise (that I’m writing about below) the Blinksale also makes it easy to import and invoice your clients and customers without having to re-enter their data into Blinksale. Finally, is also has a fine API if you wanna integrate it into your own cloud.

4. Intranet and internal processes

Once your team (or you) are set to go, you may wanna set up the processes that you need in order to run your business. Let’s start with the internal stuff.

Intranet (or actually Intranet 2.0)
Let’s make sure you get an intranet that is alive and kicking. There are a couple of ways you can solve this by putting it all online. Here are three suggestions:

Use a wiki. Wetpaint is an online community where anyone can start their own wiki. Choose from a set of templates and you’re set to go. Of course you can make sure all your content is private. Another alternative is PBWIKI, used by Citigroup and at&t among others.

Use Facebook. Ah, I know what you’re saying. Stupid. But actually not. Facebook with all it’s application makes up the perfect intranet. Just make sure all your employees are set up with a Facebook account and then start a group. Make sure the invites are personal and the group private. Then your’re off. Chattsupport, documents, videos, forums, etc etc etc. Perfect.

Use your own Facebook – Ning. This place was founded in October 2004 to give everyone the opportunity to create their own social networks for absolutely anything. Today Ning powers the largest number of social networks on the Internet.

Finally. My own favorite. Use Yammer. Yammer is like Facebook and Twitter combined and it’s set up in seconds. This is the shit if you wanna create an Intranet 2.0 for your company.

Now when you’re done with the internal stuff, obviously you can use all those three examples to create an extranet towards your best B2B clients.

5. Project management.

Forget Microsoft Project Manager. What you need is a great group collaboration software. And Basecamp is exactly that. As they say themselves: “Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.” I’ve been using Basecamp in tons of projects and it’s a killer. Not for free, but not far from it.

6. Sale support & CRM

Many companies spend millions on getting their CRM and customer support systems in place. Stupid.

First. Let’s get a little bit 2008 when it comes to customer support. Don’t believe your IT department when they wanna throw a heavyweight system that makes your budgets explode. Instead, use something that is free, something that positions your company as new thinkers and at the same time caring. Use Get Satisfaction for example. Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and FREE. Head in there and register your company. Who knows, maybe it’s even up there and people care about it…or the other way around. In that case, make sure you claim it fast and start supporting your customers.

What about CRM? Yep – no need to buy expensive software here either. Two places where you can get exactly what you need: Highrise and Salesforce. These two online CRM platforms provide Easy-to-use Web-based CRM solutions for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations that streamlines customer relationship management and boosts customer satisfaction. Salesforce is probably my number one recommendation as it is seamlessly integrated with Google Apps. On top of that they’ve already created a slick integration into the iPhone that let’s your salesforce access critical customer information instantly through the iPhone’s familiar touch screen format.

Lately however I’ve gotten more and more fond of Bantam Live that combines the power of Yammer with a typical CRM thinking.

7. Your website

So, the time has come to become public and show your ideas online. If you’ve done what I told you too and gotten yourselves a domain at Bluehost.com. Then it’s easy as one, two, three. There is a beautiful thing called Simple Scripts. It provides you with auto installations of the most common open source content management systems out there. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Geeklog, Mambo, Xoops…the list goes on.

My recommendation is WordPress. WordPress is originally a blog system that lately is being used more and more as a web content management system. Developers all over the world are adding drag and drop plugins that enable most things you would want on your website. And when it comes to designs, you have about 5000 free templates to choose from. The last couple of month more advanced templates such as Thesis and stuff Woothemes and has been released for a very small price. By using Bluehost auto installer you don’t have to care for anything in terms of configuring databases and emails on forms etc. It just works. All for the price of $6.95 a month…including hosting. Practically FREE.

If you feel you wanna get moving with WordPress. Here’s a guide I wrote some time ago on how to create a WordPress blog that rocks the world.

Once you’re done with the website and your posts and articles pile up, it’s time to burn your feed. Make sure you register your blog/site with Feedburner.

Why a Burned feed is better than a not-burned feed?

Publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
Optimize distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
It allows you to analyze your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best.

If you’re planning to sell your products online.
Not to worry. Let PayPal handle the payments. If you are planning to sell tons of products, then let Amazon Webstore handle the whole thing. Cost? $59.99 per month. Ok, maybe not free, but a whole lot cheaper than a multimillion dollar system. And I assure you, the Amazon Webstore will work like a charm. If you’re Swedish, then head over to ebutik.se and you’ll be up and running before you know it. Costs for ebutiken? Practically the same as Amazon Webstore.

Oh, and if you’ve set your site up in WordPress you could actually build your site on Thematic and then use the child theme Simple Cart powered by the great plugin WP E-commerce and start selling your gadgets for even less.

You might wanna consider checking who’s the visitor to your site.
Then time has come for another FREE product. Google Analytics. Log on, register and implement on your WordPress driven site. Google Analytics will ask you to submit a site map that makes it easier for them to crawl your site, but not to worry, there is a FREE plugin for that as well. An alternative to Google Analytics is MINT. However, that requires a little bit of technical skills, but it might be worth it.

If you’re this far into the post and have gotten your website up and running. Make sure also to check out Google Webmaster Tools. There’s a lot of goodies there.

8. Company videos and photos?

Maybe you should pay for an expensive solution to make sure there’s now glitches when your clients visits your website. NOOO, open a Flickr account, place all your videos and photography there. This way you’ll make sure you pay nothing for a fantastic streaming and storing solution. Something you normally pay at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars for normally. Cost? $24.95 a year! And oh, I forgot. If you got a hacker in your organization, you can easily use the Flickr API and create your own video and photo applications. Finally the beauty of this is that you can use a simple drag’N’drop plugin to showcase both the photos and the videos on your site and at the same time everyone who think your company is the shit, they can send these things further. By using Flickr you also make sure you have a presence in more than one place. Social networking! Obviously you can also do exactly the same with your videos on YouTube, but maybe it’s easier to place them all in one place.

There is however a new Danish player in town since a couple of weeks back. They’re called 23Video. Their business idea is pretty simple. Build your own video portal, host as many videos as you want and pay no more than 675$ a month. Splendid idea for you who wanna host your own stuff.

Whatever you do, you should make sure that you spread those videos outside your own or the network you choosed. An excellent product that I’ve written about long time ago and was reminded about in the comment field of this post is TubeMogul. TubeMogul lets you spread your content over tons of video sites and you’ll get a great overview of how it’s performing.

Let’s move on. It’s time to put that business presentation of yours into action.

9. Creating banners and TV commercials?

Of course you should run banners and TV commercials. But SEO, affiliate programs and Adwords is the shit.

Hiring an agency will of course give you the best results. But, let’s say you’ve just started, since you already spent about $10 on Flickr your pockets are empty. No worries. Now that Google features TV ads on their websites it’s easy to head over to Jivox or Spotmixer and start putting that wonderful piece of your together. Once you have created that wonder ful piece of your’s head over to Videoegg or Google TV ads and start spreading the words.

When it comes to creating your own campaigns and banners you should also consider placing competitions on sites like 99 designs. You’ll get great stuff while paying close to nothing. Look, Robyn does it.

10. Search Engine Marketing – SEO/SEM

Oh, this is probably the most complex thing you can put your mind to. First of all, before you even start you gotta get a shitload of traffic in order to experiment with it. And once you got that valuable traffic you are probably to afraid to try and you won’t make use of your SEO knowledge anyway. But luckily there’s people who can point you in the right direction – Aaron Wall, the founder of SEO Book.com. Of all the books and all the sites I’ve read on SEO marketing when I started writing this post, SEO Book.com was one of the best. Some time ago though Google published their version of a SEO book, and that one is of course free so I’d recommend you try that one first.

Apart from reading up on SEO at home I do recommend you to start following Nikke Lindqvist, Jesper Åström and Simon Sundén. Three friends of mine who shares their ideas through their blogs. Nikke and Simon in Swedish and Jesper in English.

11. Marketing

When I say marketing most people start thinking about sales people, advertising, events and getting articles about your product into newspapers and TV channel. Well, you can do without all of these channels. Think about it – ever seen an ad that sells Google?

What you’ve gotta do is get into Google Adwords, learn about affiliate marketing and get down with Facebook ads. There are of course tons of services out there. But if you become good at these three you’re almost there. If you then on top learn to master social media you’ll end up in those traditional newspapers and TV channels sooner or later anyway. Once you’ve got a database with clients you should get going with MyEmma or the better one – MailChimp. Two great email marketing services that will kick but.

12. You know what….I don’t have any energy left to finalize this post.

I just thought it was important to get it out there. So in order for you to get hold of nr 12 you’ve gotta learn how to do it by yourselves

Go get em!

ps. Feel free to share more ideas and tricks in the comments of this post!

Case: The Story Of How Sweden’s Newest Bank ‘Marginalen Bank’ Was Created, Implemented and Launched

ronnestam — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:44:15 +0000

What do you do when someone asks you to sign a non disclosure agreement and then asks you to spend the coming year planning, creating, implementing and launching a new Swedish bank?

Say yes of course!

This is where the story of the freshly launched brand Marginalen Bank starts. Together with recidivist Caroline Karlström I found myself 50% giggling like a child about the fact that we had secured the coolest and most complex project I’ve ever worked with while feeling 50% scared to death about the fact that this was that big ass project where you either succeed or you end up in a grave. Well, we did a fairly good job with Poseidon last year so why should this be any different? Little did I know what we had coming.

My main responsibility on the project that follows below has been:

Head of strategy – Develop the brand platform and the product positioning strategy
Creative direction – Creating, overseeing and keeping together everything that was produced and communicated in this project from a brand perspective.
Art direction – Designing visual brand components and overseeing the implementation of these.
Conceptual copy writing – Developing the brand vision and tonality
And some design here and there…where needed.

This project could never have been executed without my partner in crime – Caroline Karlström. In Sweden we have a saying “I vått och tort” – boy let me tell you she’s been there for me and everyone involved in this project. Caroline did a lot of the planning including most of the interviews and then managed every little piece of the project…I ran of into the wild and she took care of the tigers.

September 2009 / The challenge – create a brand that stand the tests of time!

Marginalen was founded back 1979 and has since then primarily been a B2B brand with services like debt collection, business administration, legal support and a lot more with offices in Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia and the Netherlands. Since two years back they owned a bank called Bank2 and an online service offering real estate financing. Now, in my hand I held a confidentiality agreement in which I learned that Marginalen were aiming to buy Citibank’s Swedish operation. If Marginalen succeed in taking over the Citibank private bank business Marginalen would have 6 month before every piece of communication going out from former Citibank should be re branded.

This was the challenge from a brand point of view

Ok, what had I just say yes to? We knew the deal with Citibank would be finalized sometime in April 2010. Before then we had to plan and create a strategy that could be executed in two ways depending on if the Citibank deal would go through or not, so back to the question: “Can you work out a brand strategy for Marginalen that tells us how to handle the old brands vs implementing the customer base of Citibank into our business, then create a new brand platform with accompanied visual brand guidelines, implement that platform both off and online and finally develop an advertising strategy and execute that?

One of the biggest challenges was to develop a new design that were to replace the 4 existing brand sites and implement that in only 3.5 months.

In 12 month our task was:

4 brands to be brought together as one.
4 brand and bank sites to be rebuilt into one.
Create a new brand and brand platform.
Implement the new graphical guidelines on everything that communicates the brand.
Create an advertising platform.
Launch the god damn thing!

April 2010 / The solution – Let’s build one bank and let’s make sure people get we’re not like other banks.

Following several interviews, meeting with the board, taking the international aspect into play and also the history of Marginalen we decided to build the brand – Marginalen Bank. This meant we’d scrap the two existing brands Bank2 and LånEtt. The main reason for going with one brand instead of three or two for was quite simple. We felt that building three separate brands would require far to much money and an even bigger problem was that it would require a very complex restructuring of the product portfolio and the organization that kept that portfolio intact.

On our way to the final solution we opened a lot of doors in order to get a feel for the brands. These are just some of them

Sometime in June this year the project was getting ready to explode. Until then me and Caroline had handled both the strategic and the conceptual part of the project. This is how I usually work. Go in, work out a strategy using the NEW process that I’ve developed over the years with among others good friend Per Robert Öhlin.

The three main stages of the N.E.W brand model

Prototyping carried us forward

As the strategy unfolds I tend to visualize it. And the aim with the visualization is to bring it close to final design and usually even a little bit further. I call this prototyping and I usually do that in the emotionalize phase. Prototyping means we can visualize the new or changed brand without taking realism into account. It’s better for me, but It’s even better for the client as their organization easier can let ideas through knowing it’s only a prototype. This technique has been used by the car industry for ages, but also brands like Apple has together with IDEO used prototyping to push things forward.

Once the conceptual design and the prototype has been developed it’s time to choose what and how to implement it. When we got to this stage in this project me and Caroline started to build a virtual communication house. Basically we established a virtual production house that could do what most large Swedish agencies could do…and a little bit more.

A virtual communication house

We had since some time back met with potential agencies and production houses. After bringing Marginalen Bank into the decision process we finally brought the following freelancers and agencies in to work with us: Per Robert Öhlin – Lead Copywriter, Visual ID led by Steve McDonald – graphical design, Nansen – web, Per Torberger – web copy, Hey People – print and banner production, Bizkit – media agency, Anders Freij - 3D/TVC production house and Andreas Westin – Illustrations. Once the virtual organization was set up me and Caroline led the team from both a creative and management perspective.

Very few of the logos we created during the free brainstorming process in order to find the future logo of Marginalen Bank

July 2010 / We’ve got a name and it’s Marginalen Bank

Stop. It’s a new logo!

Following many hours of bouncing logos back and fourth we finally had a first choice. This clean beauty (screen shot straight from the graphical guidelines showcasing how to place it) was a mix of the fonts Dessau Pro and Chalet from my favorite font maker House Industries with a lot of small adjustments. After I’d set this one on paper Steve from Visual ID fine tuned it and we had a winner.

No. The blue stripes are not supposed to be there

The result is a great logo that can stand the test of time. It also draws your eyes to the fact that this is a bank. Something that we believe is extremely good since bank safe and safe means people get ready to listen.

Creating and implementing the new graphical guidelines

Early in the process we introduced a gradient that became a clear brand marker. Something that we could dress different things in and thereby create strong recognition while keeping it flexible, timeless and modern.

My goal has been to give every piece of communication a unique touch. Among other things we decided to go for white credit cards. It took some investigation before we finally ended up with a pigment that actually withstands dirt. But the final classic credit card is a beauty!

We’ve so far launched a traveller and a gold card as a complement to the white classic card.

Signage was of course part of the job. This is one of many different versions.

Business cards coming to life

Examples of how to treat photography

Several potential versions of the future website was developed before we finally decided on the design below

When the final designs were approved. We met with several web agencies and finally brought in Nansen as our production house. Right now we’ve focused on getting the site up. Next is changing how it works and why.

Some examples from the first photo shoot we did for Marginalen Bank this summer together with Bsmart.

August 2010 / The advertising strategy

Ok. How do you advertise a brand new bank? Try it yourselves. Say bank and await the reaction. Making people understand that Marginalen Bank is not like any other bank would require quite a lot of money and especially tons of guts. Luckily this was something that this company had. The owners of the company and the board early understood that we had to focus on building the brand. Marginalen Bank was in it for the long run so our advertising had to support that!

October 2010 The TV commercials

When this blog post goes live there’s only one TVC that can be seen on television. However it’s one of many to come and I believe we’ve really found a format that breaks through the noise. We’ve created a concept that rely on artful executions. This first TVC, written by me and Per Robert Öhlin has been produced by Anders Freij and illustrated by Andreas Westin. Andreas has hand drawn each and every scene in ink and then colored it with watercolors.

One of the first colorings of the family by Andreas Westin

It’s then been cut out and brought into 3D where Anders and his crew has hand-animated each and every frame to give the commercial a hand crafted touch to it. It’s been a time consuming process that never could have been executed with a regular production company as it would have cost way to much. Finally we’ve worked out the music together with Erik Häusler who has done a tremendous job composing a unique piece that will be used over time to create recognition and identification with the format and Marginalen Bank.

An early rough drawing from the storyboard compared to one of the final frames

When combining hand drawn illustrations with 3D you end up with a time consuming process. However, the results is a format that stands out from regular hand animated short films and 3D renderings as well. The advantages is that we’re able to set light and movements in 3D and speed up the production process. The 35 second short film we’ve created for this first TVC was written, illustrated, painted and produced in 3D just under 5 weeks. Hand animating a piece like this would take up to 3 months. This enabled us to stick to this artistic format while working against the ‘sick’ time frame.

Building a brand with commercials like this leads to a much stronger brand over time, compared to if we would go straight for tactical advertising. However, we have to do just that, build it over time, which means we’ll follow up with new commercials, made in new artful techniques in order to broaden the scope and earn a sweet little spot inside the hearts of people. Personally I’m very pleased with the results. This TVC will do the job and start building the attention we want for the new Marginalen Brand. But it’s when we’ve broadcasted many more that the brand position will truly be established.

The print advertising

For this first campaign we’re kicking of with extremely simple print ads. We have maximum focus on establishing the tone of voice while slowly getting people used to how our brand look. We’ve kicked of with a manifesto. This one will only run two times and it’s targeted both internally and externally. We need to get that position out there.

Making people understand where we’re heading

As you will see in the papers we seem to be running quite tactical ads. This however is a strategy where I felt it was extremely important to show parts of our product portfolio to make people see that Marginalen Bank is not just any small bank. Marginalen Bank already has a great deal of products and services. This is important to communicate. And that’s why the ads look the way the do. Over time we’ll integrate them tighter with the TVCs.

3 examples of ads showcasing savings accounts, bank cards and loans.

So there we are. It feels pretty darn nice to have gotten this baby elephant out of the zoo. And I’m looking forward to keep you updated on the progress. We’re right now finalizing the implementation of the brand in house. We’ve also started do create TVC nr 2 and a print and outdoor campaign that will be more closely connected to the TVC.

This is the start. But now, when we’ve managed to get this brand kickstarted it’s time to expand on all levels. But that’s another story.

Now / Moving on from here

This is how I work. Strategy, concepts, creativity and helping my clients to establish virtual organizations so that I can move on to the next brand that want’s to solve problems. I wish that I could finish this post of with a twist but…it’s just to much and I really wanna push publish on this one cause it’s time to build some brands.

Gotta run!

I Think I Can Beat Steve Jobs

ronnestam — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:19:35 +0000

I am not applying for a new job as a CEO or Marketing Director, but if I did that would be my headline and I would run the brand I’d work for based on the insights that follow.

Steve! Bring it on!

Ok, so you’re s marketing director or even a CEO struggling to beat the he’ll out of your competition? Well, you are not alone. That’s more or less what all brands want, but why then are there so few that actually make a mark that can stand the tests of time?

Here are 14 pointers on how to get your brand charging into the future.

0.1. Before you read anything else. If your product or service doesn’t stand the competition. Get back to the drawing board and make sure it does. Then continue to Nr 1.

It’s really quite easy. Apple started their brand journey by making sure they had kick ass products.

1. Great branding is not about sticking to graphical guidelines, it’s about sticking to values and beliefs

I think I’ve written about it before. But years ago (1999) I found myself working with Nike after having called them to talk Framfab into a pitch. In one of the first meetings I attended I of course asked for Nike’s visual guidelines. One guy from Nike looked at me and said: “Just don’t touch the logo”. I repeated myself and clarified that I wondered about fonts and colorings. The guy again: “Don’t touch the logo, that’s all”.

How does Nike keep it together then? With great people of course. They act as gatekeepers of the brand. It’s in their spine like I’ve written about before.

2. Do things larger than life

Anish Kapoor knows how to make things larger than life!

Don’t be shy! Whatever you do, don’t expect that people wanna see everyday life things. We wanna get carried along and dream. The way you shape your products and services, your communication and advertising defines the way forward. Have a look at great brands. They go for the max.

3. You can never do wrong if you do different

The biggest reason for most brands not becoming true Superbrands is rationality and not believing in their potential. Take risks. Make mistakes. Turn yourselves into fools. All these things will undoubtedly lead you forward and suddenly you’ll know how to ride the horse that kicks high and outraces the competition.

4. Don’t be smart.

I’ve met far to many companies that tend to think communication and advertising is a all about calculation, analysis and smart things. Of course there are media channels where you should aim for super straight forward messages such as Adwords for example. But in most cases you should aim to create an impact. Make sure people see you and react. Any emotional reaction is better than any rational understanding.

5. Work with the best people, not the best agency

Choosing to work with an agency is not the way to go about it. No agency in the world builds a strong brand. People however, they can build you the brand you want. Either someone within your organization or someone on the consulting side. What they need is the power to change. Usually this power cannot be given to someone, it can only be earned. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the greatest brands in the world and let me tell you, the people there they either give you power to change by briefing your right and letting strange but powerful ideas through or they steer you with hands of steel. One thing they don’t do is summon big meetings where ideas are being torn apart.

6. Take control of every piece of communication

As a CEO or Marketing Director you’ve gotta own your brand. Day one at work (if you’re an employee) you’ve gotta adopt that brand, build it into your spine and decide to become the best brand in the world. Don’t look at your competition, instead decide how you intend to shape a brand the world has never seen. Every brand has the potential to become a Superbrand. It’s only up to yourselves!

7. Piss people off

Don’t be sloppy. Everything matters. Be a pain in the ass. Take control. Demand greatness. Don’t settle for less. Apple, Nike, Porsche, American Express, Sony, Starbucks etc, these brands we not build by people who said ‘This will do’ These brands were built by people who said ‘We can do better!’

8. Constantly innovate your communication activities

Whenever you’re planning a new communication activity, live by the rule “Creativity is the opposite of routine”. You constantly have to break out of your mold. What makes your client stay put is of course consistency, but It doesn’t have to mean your tactical executions have to stay the same. As long as your activities are on brand and you stick a strong logo to it, you’ll see that people tend to stay with you.

People will stay your fans as long as you treat them this way. The second you start treating them as a mass, as consumers, as numbers in a marketing plan – they’re gone!

9. Your brand equity is measured on the numbers of WOWs, not the media spend

It’s not money (ok a little bit is always good to have) that buys you new customers. It’s the numbers of WOW that does. Only by WOWing people with your products, services and your communication will you gain effects that have a positive impact on your brand.

(Ok, I know that we’re living in Sweden and you believe we don’t wanna stand out. But that does not include you not standing out. We love brands that stand out from the mold cause we dream of doing it ourselves. Brands are built on dreams!)

10. Never base your ideas on history. Base them on the future.

If it’s been done, do something else. That’s the strategy of great brands.

11. Surprises that ends with a smile builds relations

It’s like falling in love. People wanna smile. Smile is what fuels relations and relations is what you’re after. Put smiles on peoples faces and you’ll end up branding their brain. And hey, don’t forget to keep em´smiling!

12. Great ideas communication comes cheap if you let them

Some of the greatest people I’ve worked with have all said they would work for free as long as they get to shine. Most marketing directors focus 90% of their relations with creatives on telling them what they can’t do. Do the opposite – spend 90% of your time telling your creatives you want more.

13. Everything matters!

All in all. Like in every sport you’ve gotta set your mind on winning. People will keep on telling you about the best competitors out there and your answer should always be “I’ll beat the shit out of them” – Managing brands isn’t different. It’s about being the best and beat the hell out of the competition, in everything you do!

14. Set your goals high. Really high. No, I mean reeeealy high!

The title was intended to tease you of course. But then again I’m 100% honest with you. If I’d run a company I would aim to become the best brand in the world, not the best brand in Sweden, Europe or USA. The world, that’s where I’d aim. I can’t see why I’d go for anything less?

Finally, if you’re preparing to write a comment telling that I can’t beat Steve Jobs, forget it! I know I can!

Social Marketing Simplified

ronnestam — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:52:43 +0000

There are no secret formulas, no secret recipes or magic potions when it comes to social media marketing. All you’ve gotta do is take in one single fact: People have moved lots of their behaviors online and you’ve gotta follow.

To succeed in moving your business, communication and advertising into the digital world, ask yourselves the following questions:

If people search for things related to my business via Google - how can I make sure they find me?
We’ve used to organize events in the real world - where can we organize events in the digital world?
When people started to use phones you gave your sales people phones - why are you not giving them Skype, MSN, Twitter, Facebook and live streaming accounts?
You would never automate a personal relation that could lead to sales - why are you automatic every single sales process online?
People don’t listen to brands, they listen to other people - how can we make sure other people say good things about us?
Since people tend to spend their time alone behind the screen - how can we continue to build human digital relations using video, photos and copy?
In the real world you do PR towards paid media – how can you shift your PR activities to be picked up by earned media online?
Traditionally you’ve spent lots of money on media - how can you shift focus to spending lots of money on value that leads to eyeballs online?
In the offline world you would value how people navigate in your store - how much do you value how people navigate in your online world?
Building a great house requires an well paid architect – why then are you hiring the cheapest architect when building a great online presence?
In the old world comparing products was hard - does your products stand the future transparency were everything can be compared?
Back then you could create a 3 year marketing plan – what can you do to turn it into a 3 month marketing plan?
Focus groups used to lead you right - is your organization prepared to listen to real time data instead?
Building brands took years and years - how can you build your brand in months?
Competitors introduced themselves at the next fair - are you prepared for the ones who wont introduce themselves at all and don’t care about the old way of doing business, only your old customers?
You used to write business plans - how can you get moving and learn on the way.

If you’ve got 15 right answers then you’re fine. If not – start running!

How Traditionalists Think About Social Media

ronnestam — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:10:04 +0000

State your problems first. Then it might turn out social media is not what you need. And if it is. The do something unique made to work. Don’t just treat it like another channel where you can dump your offline activities.

A sloppy little drawing I did this morning inspired by the works of Al Baik.

Oh…like when you do traditional advertising you actually need money. It’s not free to reach success. And oh nr 2 – online communication is about creating equity over time. Campaigns might work every now and then but overall you should strive to build a socially distributed content driven platform over time. Then you might get fans. Might…

3 Social Media Models That Will Guide Your Brand Into The Conversation Landscape

ronnestam — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:26:17 +0000

Think social media and conversational marketing might be the next train to heaven for your brand but don’t know where to board? Well, here’s three social media marketing models that will make sure you’ll find your station.

If you wanna get moving into the social country of love where conversation rules you’ve gotta get one thing straight. Valuable content is king. Buying a loudspeaker and start tweeting wont get you anywhere. Swedish brands like Comhem and Boxer have effectively proven that just twittering the 140 sign language doesn’t earn you any followers. Every social network will provide you with it’s own possibilities and traps. A well executed strategy is a must or you’ll end up in a minefield.

Here are 3 models by Johan Ronnestam that will guide your brand towards a successful social media strategy.

3 Models That Will Guide You Into The Social Media Landscape

The Social Staircase

The Social Staircase is a model that focus on the overall process. It’s the stuff that pays for your ticket to love.
The Social Tool Matrix

Now you know what kind of presence your business needs. Now it’s time to map the tools to make sure you know what to keep your mouth shut, when to speak and when to listen.
The Social Viral Spiral

This is about speed. Spread that love I’m talking about below. But make sure you do it with finesse and timing. Create a couple of Social Viral Spirals and you’re ready to make out!

How your brand makes good use these three models is entirely up to you. When I’m working with brands within this area I off course spend quite a lot of energy and time on getting it right. But hopefully it will be of value for you without my help. Here we go:

1. Get your strategy right with the Social Staircase

The Social Staircase consists out of 4 steps that guides your brand into the conversation landscape called Social Media

I have outlined 4 steps that make up the Social Staircase. These are the ones I’d suggest you’d use too when you wanna move into the social room.

Step 1 -Strategy
Establish a strategy that supports your business. Whatever you do in life you should have a strategy in place that supports your business. In other words this means you should strive to achieve your vision, your goals and making sure you don’t loose money while doing it. This should be your approach to social media initiatives too.You should of course be prepared to risk money since it’s still an early adoption initiative. But still you should strive to measure results and revenues. Sooner or later your boss will ask you what he’s paying for and then that answer should be well prepared.

Step 2 – Presence
The mother of all conversions is content. Think about it – when you’re at a party, how long do you think your conversation would last if you didn’t provide any true value. Bullshit or merely staying quiet wont earn you any new friends. Of course some people you’ve known since way back will stay put but sooner or later even them will stop inviting you to their party.

I haven’t bothered to create any models for this step. It’s a simple rule. Think about you and your business. What value can you provide people with and in what format? Blogs, Video, Photos, Podcasts, Livestreams, Advisory, Games, Knowledge etc. Based on your strategy in step 1 – what kind of value can you provide your target group and potential fans with? Cause that should always be your goal – turning people into fans! If you’ve done your homework this should work like a charm.

If you’re looking for inspirations. Head over to the Social Media Wiki.
Step 3 – Tools
Ok. So know you know that kind of presence you’re after. Then it’s time to gear up. Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, WordPress, LinkedIn, Scribd, Google Buzz might be the obvious ones. But dig deeper – there’s something for everyone out there and you should consider where your content will do the boogaloo at it’s best!Tools defined? Then move on and figure out when to run with it and when to slow down. Move over to the conversation step, create a set of social viral spirals and get down to business.

Step 4 – Conversation
Listen. Talk back. Listen. Talk back. Listen. Talk…This is what a conversation is all about. We could actually call it interactivity. You create valuable content and then once you let it out in the open – listen and learn how to fine tune those spirals of yours.

(I’ve posted stuff before on the listening part and so have others – that’s of course crucial in this phase. Since neither me or them have posted a tip on Silverbakk then here it is.)

You should avoid creating to many spirals. They will only confuse you. But on the other hand if you got to few you might not hit the right spots. After all, segmentation has been around for ages and it’s not for the fun of it. Segmenting who and how to target your audience is essential.

Let’s move on and a have a look at the Social Tool Matrix.

2. What content goes where – Outline your tactical tools with a Social Tool Matrix

It’s all about structure, planning, organization and control (once you have something to say)

Don’t pick any tool out there for the fun of it and definitely don’t let one person in your organization handle them all. Every tool has it’s own advantages and should be treated that way.

Once you’ve passed the strategy and presence step in the Social Staircase it’s time to map which tools can do the work for you. It’s now time to create a Social Tool Matrix.

The Social Tool Matrix basically makes sure you and your organization analyze and choose a set of social tools that can deliver on strategy. While you’re entering stuff into the matrix you’ll be forced to answer the following questions:

What tools shall we use to fulfill our strategy?
Choose your tools carefully. Just because your competitor is riding the wave over at Facebook doesn’t mean you should. Look back at the social staircase. What strategy and what presence should you support?
Why should we use this tool?
Publish, interact, spread, buzz, images, video etc. Remember that sometimes you’ll be better off with more than one tool doing the same thing. Video for example. YouTube, Viddler and Vimeo are all about video but have different advantages.
Who should be responsible for the updates?
Don’t drop the entire load on top of a webmaster. Make sure your social marketing is spread out horizontally on your organization. The right person for the job huh?
What’s the naming / domain conventions?
I use ‘ronnestam’ everywhere I can. What’s your strategy? Think before you act and then keep track of it!
When can we say we’re successful?
This is a hard one. People that comment your blog posts. Diggs. Linkups. Facebook recommendations. Re-tweets. SEO effects. Actual sales. You pick your own index but make sure to pick a couple. Both qualitative and quantitative cause they’re both important.
Can we measure the return of investment (ROI)
If success was hard this is pretty darn impossible when it comes to social media. Some of you might say it’s not. But isolation of social media effects are hard. One of the few examples I know of is Dells Twitter outlet and that’s pretty unique.
What social spiral shall we use (this will be defined in the next stage)
You’re not here yet. But once you get to the next stage of this post. That’s when you decide on the social spirals. Every time you activate a tool. Remember what and what good it does. The Social Spirals will lead the way!
And whatever more you think should go into the matrix.
Last but not least. This post is inspirational – not an actual guide. You have to do your homework and your business might need a lot more inside the matrix than my actual example. Get it right and you shall succeed!

Once you got the social matrix mapped you and everyone in your organization is prepared to start the conversation it’s time for one last thing – the Social Viral Spirals.

3. Get viral with the Social Viral Spiral

Choose your tools wisely and start a conversation

Many of you have of course seen Brian Solis Social Conversation Prism.I love it too but it’s more of a wonderful image that maps all the possibilities with the social web than help for brands who are trying to figure out what to do and where to do it. Of course you can do everything and in some cases maybe you should. But what you really need once you’ve got an idea what you can do is a tactical tool.

I’ve created the The Social Viral Spiral for exactly that purpose. Use Brian Solis Prism and then translate the tools and services you need and create your own set of Social Flowers depending on what you are trying to achieve.

What the Social Spiral does is basically define where, what, how and when you should seed that content of yours into the social web. Triggering conversations online must start somewhere and then continue over a series of social networks and tools depending on what your purpose is. Marketing campaigns are in need of a lightning speed spread. Corporate information might not need that spread at all but still needs to go social due to SEO reasons for example.

A brand or company can have as many spirals as they want but I personally think you should aim for 3 or 4 depending on what kind of product and services your brand produce. The purpose of these spirals differ depending on a set of factors and you will probably have to adjust them over time.

Once you’ve got an idea on what kind of content and activities should be matched with a certain spiral you will surely have better chances in succeeding and most importantly you will have moved the knowledge about conversation from a specific employee to your organization!

Things that affect the intensity/speed of your spirals.

Type of content
Timezones
Time of actual publishing
Internet behavioral patterns
Where did you act the last time
Number of followers on Twitter
Number of friends in social networks
Amount of social networks where you intend to interact
How unique is the content you intend to promote
What brand do you represent?
Purpose – marketing, operations, news, etc…

Got that wired? Good. Then it’s all about creating that content and spin the wheel.

Right now you might have tons of open questions about this post OR it seems perfectly clear. I really don’t care which since I’ve gotta get this thing published before it consumes me.

Best of luck!

Microsoft Advertising And Indikat Says I’m Good At What I Do. Thank You!

ronnestam — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:26:53 +0000

I am a Swede. We’re not supposed to say we’re good at something. In fact even when others say we’re good we’re not supposed to say that either. We even have a name for it – ‘Jantelagen‘.

But I’m not like other Swedes and on top of that I’m pretty darn proud about the fact that the readers of Microsoft Advertising and Indikats monthly newsletter have named me Swedens most influential authority within the field of digital communication and innovation. Thank you!

Read it in Swedish or English (Google Translated).

How To Create A Great Ad For A Beer Brand? Easy! – You Don’t!

ronnestam — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:59:39 +0000

So there you are. Heading a beer brand. You’ve turned into a ‘baldy’ since most of your hair has fallen off due to crazy competition, expensive media investments leading nowhere, a product that is older than your ancestors (I’m talking the ones that lived before we had bikes and shit). Now you want people to drink more of that golden product of yours. What do you do? Advertise? Hell no!

Easy. You stop that advertising stuff you’re doing and launch a product instead. As a matter of fact you launch a bag of crisp to complement your product. Smart as hell. This is exactly what the guys down under at Droga 5 Australia managed to convince beer brand Victoria Bitter to do.

Result then? Better brand visibility in-store very close to the actual beer buying decision. Double your revenues (if it tastes good that is) and on top of that – Salt. Yes, that white little thing that melts on your tongue and makes you crave more…you guessed it..beer!

Now there’s innovative advertising for ya!