Blog of Ronnestam » social media

Answering 10 questions about the future of communication (in Croatia to some extent)

ronnestam — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:49:39 +0000

About 2 month ago I was invited to Best Internet and beautiful Zagreb in Croatia to host a full day workshop on the future of communication. Me another 85 people had a great day where I mixed speaking sessions with, what I love the most, open discussions.

Before this event I was contacted by the leading business newspaper in Croatia – Lider. They wanted me to answer 10 questions that they would base an article on. Today as I was cleaning my desktop on my computer I thought – since you probably understand as much Croatian as I do I thought this could be a good blog post. So here we go.

Johan Ronnestam answers 10 questions about the future of communication (in Croatia to some extent

1. Once you are on the internet your competition is whole world and people speak in one language (mostly english). How can local brands stay local or share national values while ‘living’ in virtual world?

Johan Ronnestam: By being just that – Local. In a globalized world people will look for the unique brand that delivers something beyond what you can shop in every parts of the world, every country and every city. The times when we all wanted Starbucks coffee is soon to be over. Everyone who’s been traveling the last ten years recognize the feeling. You travel all over the world only to find the same brands you can shop for at home. Branding and marketing has always been about differentiation – and that’s why building on local uniqueness is the way forward.

2. You wrote that brand should offer value, not just sell, sell, sell…They should teach consumers some skills or just share knowledge. I agree, but how to explain it to CEO or CFO? What and when could they expect return on investment?

Johan Ronnestam: First off. It’s really not that different from a non-digital world. The brands you wanna come back to are the brands that offer more than their product. Traditionally this used to be about well educated sales personel, customer magazines, cliniques and more. It’s time to move this knowledge online but with the understanding that online means transparency. It’s easier than ever to compare products and features. So – the online salesmen (sites) gotta focus on value over sales. Sales will follow. When it comes to return on investment I think the answer is long term growth in social networks, search and obviously brand recognition. The social and search part can easily be measured. The brand recognition is tough to isolate – but that’s always been the case. Hasn’t it?

3. Do we really know our consumers? I mean, which are the easiest ways to get to know them or test them?

Johan Ronnestam: No we don’t. We tend to think we know our consumers but the consumer (if you even wanna call them that today) today is not the same as yesterday. People are more like chameleons. We tend to jump back and forth when it comes to identity. We simply don’t wanna be tagged. Online however we can really know what our visitors do and how they perform tasks. But don’t fall into the trap thinking you know who they are. A 18 year old guy from the suburbs wont react the same way twice.

4. What are your predictions concerning investment in internet as a media? What is going to happen with traditional media?

Johan Ronnestam: In a near future I don’t think we’ll look at the landscape as a media landscape. We’ll look at it more as a formated landscape. What I mean with this is that TV commercial won’t be a TV commercial any more. A forced video message however will live on. We’ll always be in need of distributing messages containing products and brands that people never heard of – for that we can not rely on search, social media etc. Someone has to find it first. PR and ambassadors marketing will of course mean a lot for those kind of messages but there will always be a place for interrupted messages like the ones TV, Print and Outdoor deliver today. The effect of the digital revolution however is that the information gathering, the desire and even the sales part of the consumer journey will be digitalised and therefor transformed.

5. In Croatia experts talk about digital revolution, internet marketing campaigns etc, but still, none has the courage to invest or try those virtual project like those in western market. What should the do first (as beginners) and what are the things they should know before investing in internet communication? What are the biggest signals that market (consumers) are ready for that kind of communication?

Johan Ronnestam: Prototypes. Experiments. Failure. Success. Meaning – you’ll have to mark a certain part of your media budget, not your production budget, for experiments that might lead you forward. The internet is unique in the sense that no two solutions are the same for two brands. You have to find your own way forward. One thing is for sure – as we’re seeing a shift in how people consumer brands we’ll also see new winners and losers on the market. The looses, as always when a behavior changes, will definitely be the ones that doesn’t welcome change.

6. How to boost traffic and where does it come from mostly?

Johan Ronnestam: Great brands today and tomorrow are built on great products. If you got em’ people will find you. If you’re product doesn’t stand the competition. Start there.

7. You wrote that faces, copy and design are very important and warned that competitors are just click away. Can you tell us something about that?

Johan Ronnestam: In the real world if you’ve found your way to a car dealer and everything doesn’t meet your demand it’s still for you to get into the car, drive for 30 minutes and find that next dealer. Online that click is just one step away. If your audience doesn’t get your design, understand your navigation, like your tone of voice he/she will type a new search into Google and move to the next brand.

8. What can we expect in future? Boom of conversational marketing? What about virtual advertising?

Johan Ronnestam: I actually think we’re in a 10-15 year period where small brands can bloom. But once those large brands find their way online for real (yep I think most of them suck at online communication) we’ll see how Adwords auctions will be about money again – and large brands got loads of that stuff. However – I do hope some of those small brands find their way up on the global scene

9. What are your thoughts on trend of branded web-series?

Johan Ronnestam: If focused on value regarding the category in which their products exist – great. Otherwise mostly stupid.

10. Internet is all about speed…What about emotions?

Johan Ronnestam: Technology and user interfaces is not what the brand is about. It’s merely the means to deliver the consumer experience of the product. So, photography, video and copy equals emotions. The actual websites however should focus on conversion, usability. By doing so you’ll end up having consumers feeling positive. I think Apple proves that both can be achieved side by side.

Ah. And before you leave this post. Here’s the presentation I held:

110412 workshop in Zagreb

View more presentations from Johan Ronnestam

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!

Social Media. It’s There To Give Your Brand A Body

ronnestam — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:05:53 +0000

We’ve all heard it before. A brand is not a logo, nor is it your products or services. Your brand is the sum of peoples feelings when they think about your brand. Or said in a more ‘techy’ way – An emotional translation of what first comes to mind when neurons fire in the brains around the world when your brand, products or services is mentioned.

As people spend more and more of their life socializing online and searching for products and services your brand is naked, exposed and on it’s own. There are no sales people telling people about your product anymore, you’re left with seconds to raise interest before people leave you and most important – your brand no longer belongs to you, it belongs to all those people online who either say good things about you or worse, tell people that your brand suck!

Here are 5 things to think about when keeping your brand together in the future social world.

1. Brand presence not brand site

I’ve written about this and that before. But it’s something worth repeating. You should not – I repeat – you should not focus on driving traffic to your website. Instead, focus on spreading your brand over as many social networks and websites as possible. If you do and do it good, people will end up finding you anyway. Funny, by not focusing on driving traffic you’ll end up driving traffic

2. Paint it all in green (or whatever you need to paint it in in order to create brand recognition)

Cover the social web as best described by Brian Solis and Jess3 with your brand colors

Socially spread content must always do good. This means you should create 2 second intros for all your videos, take the time to ad the right metadata to social sites like YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, Vimeo, Viddler and more. If we like what we see, read, listen to and experience your content will enforce your brand in a positive way. Don’t overestimate that people will search for your brand. The attention span today is more or less null. So brand recognition is a must.

3. Share value not tag lines

Don’t think social communication is about advertising inside social networks. Focus on value creation. Once you start focusing on value your getting back into the digital value chain that now is being hijacked by your customers and other people.

For example, If your into consulting your best chance of getting new customers is actually to blog and share content on how people could do without you. That’s content the people will link to, share and promote. That way you’ll end up in top positions in Google, you’ll be shared on Facebook, Twitter and other networks. In the end you’ll earn new customer who does not want to do it themselves but intead hire a consultant that obviously knows what they’re doing – that will be you.

So, do what Gary Vaynerchuck is doing to promote his online Wine shop on YouTube, Viddler, Twitter and Winelibrary TV or American Express does with Open Forum – share value. Sooner than later customers that does not wanna do it themselves will find you – and they’ll of course choose a provider that knows what they are doing, something you’ve already proven.

Gary uses Viddler to create chapter value while YouTube serves traffic purposes

4. Know Your fans

Spend time tapping in to the constant flow of social interactivity. Head over to Socialmention and search your brand. In seconds you’ll enter a universe of conversations that revolves around you and your brand. Or better yet, set up a dashboard and automatize your brand monitoring like the big brands do.

Once you’ve cleared that step, start Googling keyword and phrases connected to your product and services. Aim? Find those closed forum and communities that Socialmention and other tools cannot find. This is probably where your true fans spend their time online. Now enter and listen – DON’T interact. It’s their arena not yours!

5. Make sure your organization truly lives and breathes digital communication

Education of course. But first and foremost – have your organization live and breath digital communication. No modern brand should have marketing people on board who doesn’t understand the Internet.

Why not implement things like Yammer internally to ensure that each and every employee truly understands how to interact socially. Even better – have employees start Blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts and then help them/teach them to track the conversation. In the end, the only way to fully go social is to upgrade peoples knowledge about future communication.

That’s all for today. Gotta board a flight!

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…

The Power Of Participation – The Ushahidi

ronnestam — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:33:17 +0000

Every now and then when I spend time online I find things that make me shiver cause they’re so freakin cool. Today I found an open source project that matches that description and I’d like to share it with you. It regards an organization called Ushahidi and their kick ass crowdsourcing platform.

Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, was initially a website developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. Since then Ushahidi have grown from an ad hoc group of volunteers to a focused organization.

Crime reporting in Haiti with the Ushahidi platform

Now the platform is available as an Open Source platform and it kicks ass. It’s among the coolest mashup platforms I’ve seen. Since launch the Ushahidi collaboration platform has been used to collaborate on crime tracking in Atlanta, , wildlife tracking in Africa, monotoring of voting in Mexico, mapping the crisis in Haiti and even cleaning up after the Snowmageddon in Washington and a lot more. The platform lets you contribute via mail, Twitter, SMS and online reporting.

You might have read the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. If not the short story is basically that Clay writes on how internet fundamentally changes the way we communicate due to the fact that this world wide web thing creates a never ever seen platform that enables people to create, share and consume information at a close to no cost. The Ushahidi platform is more or less rocket fuel for the ideas Clay is bringing forward in his book.

What do you wanna mashup? Head over to Ushahidi and get going!

Social Media And Our Beloved Europe? The Truth Or At Least Part Of It.

ronnestam — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:02:24 +0000

Students over at the Berghs School of Communication asked for some advice on research about social networking behaviours in Europe.

As I gathered my links and sources from my Delicious account I ran into this wonderful presentation below by Tom Smith from Trendstream. The presentation was given by Tom to the IAB Europe Social Media Research Showcase, sharing insights from Wave 1 of the Global Web Index. It’s well composed and extremely valuable if you’re into branding, communication, advertising, business development and social media. So I thought I should share it with you too!

Tom lists three big trends that will impact your brand in 2010 based on Social Media involvement across Europe.

The passive impact of social media is bigger than the active one
We increasingly consume content and information based on the consumer network
Digital networks are much now bigger than our face to face ones

So there you go. Nothing to blame on now. Just get going!

What are people doing online while you’re reading this post

ronnestam — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:33:35 +0000

A Tweet from Gary Hayes caught my eye this morning. I followed a link and found this wonderful social media counter. Gary has built and coded this app based on data collected from a range of social media sites.

Sit tight and watch the thing start counting. After a couple of seconds you’ll grasp the power of social media. But also note the stats that tells you how many SMS’s that has been sent globally. People pay for that stuff!!!

Dear CEO’s, Board Members and Top Management – what’s more important? Wine or Change?

ronnestam — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:55:59 +0000

This post is probably most stupid post one can write since CEO’s and board members seems to have decided to stay behind with the dinosaurs while the rest of us look for new ground where we can thrive and prosper. Basically on average they read three local newspapers of their own choice, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and watch a couple of TV channels. They haven’t got a clue about blogs, feed readers and social networks. But I’ll give it a go anyway.

Dear CEO and board member. In most cases you’re probably +40 years old. You have a wife, two kids and live in a house that cost above average. Two cars in the garage and a country-side home. You spend weekends together with other CEO’s and board members in order to secure your position in the hierarchical ladder of success (or at least what you define as a success). Vacations are chosen based on where you’re supposed to be rather than where you would like to go.

Or as Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and chief executive officer (obviously an exception) of WPP puts it 13 minutes into this very insightful video below:

“Clients, mediaowners and agencies tend to be run by older people. They’ve got to the top of companies. Change is the last thing they’re really interested in. You want a quiet life, travel around the world and making sure everything’s ok”

It’s your life we’re talking about and I understand you don’t want to rock the boat. That could of course lead to you having to sell your boat, spend your vacation in another place and replace some of those expensive wine bottles of yours with cheaper ones. So sitting tight along with the rest and not challenge the establishment is probably the right thing to do. After all, in 10-20 years there’s another generation coming along – let them change things.

No! Nee! ????! Ne! Ei! ?! Nein! ??! Nei! Nej!

There is no time for that! You have to start changing things now before your company gets run over by a couple of teenagers sitting in a coffee shop disrupting your business. (Not that I don’t love that idea). The world is in a state of change. Companies and brands all over the world are falling behind due to slow leadership.

Since I’m trying to not to be one of those persons who’s all about yelling I’d also like to provide you with a couple of guidelines you may wanna follow:

Every company can and should become an e-Business.

Make everyone in your company think, eat, shit the E. That’s how the military would have said it. And it suits this post pretty good. The digital world turn things upside down in a way we’ve never seen before so you’ve gotta make sure everyone is on the boat.

A common problem is that a few people in the marketing department might have a clue about what goes on. But, without support from you – the board of directors, the CEO, CTO and CFO they’re screwed. Far too many companies sees the internet as yet another business area. But the internet does in fact change every little bit of your company.

The internet cuts horizontally through every part of your business so your future marketing and communication strategy has to do the same.

Communication of tomorrow is not about new formats or channels it’s about a whole new way of thinking about your business.

This new digital order calls for a totally new way of thinking and I don’t believe many traditional advertising agencies know shit about it. The fault is not really theirs, it’s yours. You have to integrate marketing into your product development. On top of that you have to make sure that marketing competence knows all about digital and traditional marketing cause the problem is more complex that dividing things into digital and traditional advertising.

Today we have categorized consultants into categories – Advertising, Internet consultants, PR, Event, Mobile, Direct Marketing, Guerrilla and so on. Tomorrow you will have to get all of those brains into a single one. Of course, your Advertising agency might suggest you put together some sort of workshop with people from each category – THIS IS WRONG.

The problem with such a setup is that it’s a compromise. You can never reach a satisfactory result by having a lead agency that knows traditional communication and then a group of other consultants. You simply have to get it all into one brain cause that single advertising idea has to take every category into account when you develop and launch ideas.

Look at Garmin for example. They develop among other things GPS running watches. The watch syncs my runs via Bluetooth with an online community that shows me where I’ve been running on a Google map. My information is then automatically uploaded to Facebook so that I can share my training data with friends.

Is this social advertising, a product, service or crm?

Ask yourselves – What is marketing, what is product and what is business development.

I say It’s all tied together in a way we’ve never seen before and most of you CEO’s, board members and top management don’t get the full picture.

Of course Garmin advertise their products today, but tomorrow they might rely on viral traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that is more or less injected into their entire business.

The future mix of communication and advertising is so tied together with business and product development so in order for us communication consultants to deliver a work well done and on brief we have to get new kind of briefs with new kind of objectives. Communication and advertising has to move up the ladder and we have to look beyond advertising. Instead we have to rethink how companies develop and launch products, how companies are organized in order to sell, how the people in a company can be more involved on every level and how a CEO can learn what the digital world can do for his company.

So, integrate advertising, marketing and communication straight into your business development. And if you as a CEO don’t understand these different formats you’ve got nothing there to do!

I call for a new category – let’s call it entrepreneurial advertising. An entrepreneur would never go on with any kind of communication that didn’t deliver. It’s time for you to care about your company in that way too!

You might wanna head back and read one of my older posts: ‘Seduce us or excuse us – 11 ways to bring your brand up to date‘ that broadens my point of view even further.

What’s your business doing there when it should be here

We are out there waiting but we’re not only in front of the TV anymore.

Think about your business. You’ve probably got tons of content waiting to be spread. Catalogues, photos, movies, texts, ads, business systems and so on. Well, what are you waiting for? Put it out there. And out there doesn’t mean you should publish it on your own platforms or one that matches your own ideals. Let it loose.

A common mistake is choosing between different social platforms. People ask me – “If I am to publish video online, should I choose YouTube or Vimeo?” I answer every time – “Choose them all!” There is no cost involved. People spend time on different sites. And the more content you have out there, the more traffic you’ll get in return. If you spread content on outside platforms you will in the end receive traffic back to your brand in one way or another. If it’s done by the book it will do wonders for your SEO work.

In order to get the best possible performance from your products and services. Think about what you can do best and work your ass off in order to make your brand the nr 1 source for people enjoying your product category. If you’re in the business of building cars, think, do you build cars for transportation, for fun or for some other purpose. If you think it’s about transportation. Let’s say families. Then do everything in your power to become the brand that makes transportation more efficient, more safe and more fun.

The conversation prism by Brian Solis

So, think about how you can distribute your brand all over the digital world the same way you distribute it in the offline world. The only difference is that distribution online is for free once you’ve turned your content production and communication process around.

Connect not collect

People don’t want to connect to your products or services. They wanna connect to values, beliefs, emotions, passion and personality. Like when I wrote about Telco’s earlier this year: “We are in the entertainment business – let’s act as such”.

The brands that invite people to a conversation, listen to them, show them respect and show that they value people for being people and not potential money – those brands will be the winners.

Creative excellence

I’m not gonna write about this one again since I’ve outline it a post before. But I suggest you read that one once you’re done reading this post.

Get your own fan club

In order for your business to be virally spread. Get fans and let them break the rule.
A problem today is that most things spreading like wildfire on the net tend to break a couple of rules. As a legal business you have a disadvantage against the everyday consumer. However, if you get the everyday consumer on board, let him or her do the dirty work. If they like you they’ll be more than happy to stand on the barricades.

Have a look at Zappos for example. Their CEO has got 1,356,038 followers on Twitter! How many have you got?

Get all your employees on board or actually off board. Seriously, if your employees are reachable with land lines or email. Then why shouldn’t I be able to follow them on twitter or become friends with them on Facebook?

The media 180° turn

Yesterday – we all got communicated to when we were in front of the TV or reading a magazine at a certain time on a certain day. This meant brands had to spend quite a lot of time and money to hit a consumer with their message.

Tomorrow – your message must be on 24/7 standby so that when your potential target searches for whatever you’re selling you hit that consumer one time – and that time you’ve gotta hit on your first shot. Everything that stands in your way will lead to a misfire.

Read all the news not only the filtered stuff

I opened up this post with critique pointed towards the fact that most people read only a few sources of information on a daily basis. That was all ok when leading media companies still had monopoly on information. However today most news you read in for example Wall Street Journal has already been out there for a couple of days and the diversity is not broad enough. That’s what you’ve gotta create your own customized news desk based on what you need to know in order to run your company. I would say you have to move from reading 5-10 sources to 50-100 a day.

Last year I tipped about my own source of information – tons of RSS feeds read through Netvibes that I also use to track my brand. Why not start by following some of the channels I personally follow and then slowly remodel that interface to fit your own needs. Read the post I wrote about it for more information.

To sum things up!

As always there’s tons of more things to do. But that would require me to write a book and there’s just not enough time to do that this weekend. Sooner or later I’ll publish that one as well and then I promise I’ll give each and every board member of a Swedish listed company a copy for free!

Finally before I end this post I’d also recommend you to browse through this presentation that I held last week about 10 trends on future communication. It might light up the path for you even more.

See you on the other side!

21 Steps on How to Monitor Your Brand Online and Keep Track of the Conversation

ronnestam — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:41:22 +0000

And now to a very sensitive issue – monitoring. As some of you know my profession is leading brands into the future of communication. One of the more important parts of this is teaching them how to keep track of their own brands in the jungle of conversation. What are people saying about my brand, where does the conversation take place and how can we respond to it – simple questions really.

However, quite many brands don’t have a clue on how to do this or even worse – they haven’t even started to think about tracking conversations related to their brands.

When I speak about this we often end up talking about me and how I track my own brand. I try to keep track of every conversation out there that in one way or another has my name or brand in it. As often as I can I also listen to, respond or in other ways take the conversation into account – just as any brand should.

One of my Netvibes dashboards that I use to monitor Ronnestam online

Since sharing is caring – here is how to track keywords online on a daily basis without paying for it. NOTE – this doesn’t give you a 100% guarantee and the more generic your brand is the harder it is to monitor it, then professional help might be your solution. It also applies better to smaller brands rather than large ones. But you will gain some control over what happens online in most open forums and it’s a start!

Follow these 21 steps to take gain some sort of control of where your brand might be mentioned online

First thing. Head over to Google Alerts and enter the keywords you want to monitor. This is the easy one.
Then do the same over at Socialmention Alerts. An easy one too. However, these first two ones are a little bit slow so continue reading.
Register an account on Netvibes.com and once your done keep that Internet browser window open.
Open one more window (press CTRL+N or CMD+N on a Mac)
In the new window, go to socialmention.com and perform a search on the keywords (for example the name of your brand) you want to track.
Once you have gotten your result. Look for the orange RSS icon in the top right corner.
Click the RSS Feed icon.
Now select the link in your web browser and copy (press CTRL+C or CMD+C on a mac).
Switch back to the window where you have your new Netvibes.com page.
In the top, press new Tab and name it with the keyword you searched for.
In the top left, click the green button ‘Ad Content’ and choose Ad a Feed in the drop down menu.
Place your marker in the field that says ‘Enter a feed address or website URL for auto detection’ and paste (CTRL+V or CMD+V on a mac).
Press the button Add Feed besides your pasted link.
Now press the little green button that says ‘add’ and you search result will be displayed in the bottom field below the Tab that you just named.
Switch windows and perform the same search in Socialmention but this time click the tab Microblogs above the search field
Redo the entire process and you have added your next search.
Once you are done you should have searches in each and every area from the web.
Now Switch window back to the one with Social Mention and go to Icerocket.com
On Icerocket you will find the RSS results to the left.
Now perform the same process except for creating new tabs in Netvibes.
Once done, go to Twingly.com and perform the same searches on both Blogs and Microblogs.
Last thing to do. Go to the preferences of your internet browser and change your startpage to netvibes.com

Now you will at least know if there’s any shit written about your brand and you have the possibility to act.

And of course I do know that some of you might think this sounds scary but this is the world we live in and you should act in accordance.

Skittles innovates their brand through the use of widgets and social media

ronnestam — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:02:19 +0000

Candy brand Skittles have produced some kick ass TVC’s (Skittles leak being one of my favorites) through out the years and now they’re innovating the use of social media within fast moving consumer goods.

This blog post started in my head after seeing this discussion below between two of the bloggers I’m following. David Armano from Logic+Emotion and Jackie Huba with Church of the Customer Blog. They’re talking about Skittles and how they changed turned their entire website into a Twitter search for the keyword skittles. Jackie doesn’t like it, David does.

Skittles is of course not the first FMCG brand to do cool things online. Altoids has been rockin’ the web with cool content since about 2001. Jackie Huba mentions Jelly Belly and their content heavy site. The thing though with strategies like this is that you’re not taking advantage of the social crowd out there. Instead you’re constantly paying to pull traffic to your own site instead of placing yourselves where the customers are on their terms.

What’s really cool with all this to me is not the fact that Skittles is using Twitter but instead the little widget they’ve created that goes on top of whatever they want.

So, instead of building they’re on site or even mashup, they’ve created the ultimate mashup – a Skittles widget that navigates you directly to the respective channels online – Youtube for video, Twitter for chat, Facebook for friends, Flickr for photos and ultimately Wikipedia for product info.

This case is a simple yet cool explanation what you can do online today. I’m speaking quite often about the power of distributing your content outside of your own domains and this is a good example of it.

Sum up. Experimentation has to be a part of your communication. Sitting at home waiting for the ultimate strategy won’t work cause the net is ever changing!

Aloha!