Content marketing and 2 sociological principles

Aloha! :)

I could not feel happier after my last meeting with the dissertation supervisor, fall in love with sociology even more and decided to write something very academic today. So here are some thoughts on the content marketing.

In one of her recent articles Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School Anita Elberse suggested the two principles formulated by sociologist William McPhee on consumer behaviour, to work in Digital Media environment today as perfectly as they did 50 years ago. The first principle claims the most popular products to only attract ‘light’ consumers or those who are not ‘the biggest fans of your brand‘, but simply buy it occasionally. The second principle, in McPhee words, is that ‘the larger the proportion of the people [unfamiliar] with a given alternative, the less likely are those who are familiar with it to like it especially’ (says McPhee).

When applied into digital realities, you will see that niche products are less rated and appreciated than popular ones. However, those who order relatively unpopular products usually buy more items. As a result, the most popular products are chosen by the least loyal customers, or, in other words, the least loyal audience makes you products popular.

I don’t suggest you stop worrying about loyalty, vice versa, focus on content marketing. If we think about loyalty as the last step in the Awareness-Familiarity-Consideration-Purchase chain, than the most aware customers are your most active buyers. So, the more you speak and write, and post, and share the better.

Secondly, 68% of people spend time reading about brands, which means your articles, blog posts, newsletters, infographics and other forms of content are theoretically effective. For the remaining 32% make your content valuable and interesting by adding useful information without direct advertising and purchase offers.

Thirdly, do not emphasize your niche products in the online content because this will disadvantage their uniqueness and distract loyal and the most familiar customers. Finally, evaluate your results to be sure those two principles actually work.

PS. as for me I would not trust sociologists that much - they also say birthdays are very useful. Like the more birthdays your have - the longer your live. That`s a very engaging statistics. ;-)   

Enjoy your day guys! I will write to you tomorrow.

Dissertation in Facts&Figures

Hi everyone!


Remember I`ve told you about great free websites for infographics? Today I decided to test Piktochart and create an illustration to my dissertation writing process. Looks pretty engaging to me. Tell me what you think!

Best wishes,

Me :)

Marketing advice from my Master's dissertation No.2

Rainy-windy-busy afternoon to everyone.:)

That's been a really loooong and pleasand weekend for me, hope you enjoyed it as well. 
It is Monday now and time to read and share more interesting ideas and useful tips. As I've told you last time my dissertation seems to be full of PR and marketing insights, so I cannot wait to share the second finding with you. In fact, this will be my own thoughts with reflection on something very engaging.  

Just the day before I finished my last chapter somewhere in the labyrinth of the Internet I`ve found these amazing video. Created by extremely talented motion and graphic designer Shimi Cohen and based on Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together, it made me think of this second tip. 

2. Don't make people feel lonely

The main conclusion in the video is that SNSs, although designed to connect people and facilitate communication, in fact, made us feel even more lonely. That is because of this three paradoxical assumptions that we all have as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ users (any other SNSs counts):

- We can put our attention wherever we want it to be
- We will always be heard
- We will never have to be alone

This is the actual video in case you have not watched it yet.

What has all of these to do with marketing? Hm...I suggest it might be true that people became  less connected, less happy or even  less sociable. On the other hand, it also is true that we make those 3 above mentioned suggestions and want social networking sites to make us less lonely. Therefor, why don't you,  marketers, give people what they want?

1. Be a friend - be that company which will always make its customers day - with its oustanding services, high quality products, helpful website and attractive social media content. 

2. Always listen to your customers and make them feel you appreciate them. 

3. Never ever leave your clients, customers, readers, visitors etc. without support. There is nothing more annoying than a customer service that cannot be reached when you need it most; nothing more dissapointing than my 'witty comments' on Facebook left unnoticed by the page owner; and nothing better than a cute picture of a fluffy cat and a 'good read' posted somewhere on Google+ at 2 pm just on time, in case I could not sleep. All of this makes the digital world better, transforming users illusions in some very real customer care. 

This is it for today. :)

P.S. How cool would that be if the word loneliness meant 'no friends online', while in real life somebody was always there for you? Like abso-bloody-lutely cool! :)

Marketing advice from my Master's dissertation No.1

Hey-hey, my amazing virtual audience! :) Hope you are all doing great enjoying you digital selves.

Have not posted anything here for quite some time...I know...in my defense - I was not procrastinating, but making some wonderful scientific discoveries! In other words, I spent few sleepless nights putting together the very last chapter of my dissertation. And you know what? - That was totally worth it! Not only now I am feeling proud and relieved, but I`ve also got some pretty wonderful tipsto share with you.

Just to give you some background information: my reserach was a part of MSc Sociology programme (in case you don't know. Hm...I wonder if my blog is adding anything to promotion of such a great major?). However, the topic I`ve chosen for investigation is very digital-PR-marketing-SNS orientated.

It is all about this neologism coined to describe a phenomenon when people 'Like' and '+1' and 'Share' and show huge online support, but than this all stay Facebook-(or whatever)-declared only. They (and by them I mean journalists and academia people) call it 'slacktvism', 'clicktivism', 'keyboard activism' and so on. If you google the thing, you'll probably find more articles on politics, civic activism, charities and similar contextualisation of the idea. Well, I kind of studied similar dimension in my dissertation, but because I cannot reveal anything specific here (due to University Policy on Ethics and something else), I decided to share some thoughts on the application of my findings for the PR and marketing purposes. In particular, it really is interesting why many people state 'purchase promising' behaviours online (e.g. in a form of 'Like'), but never actually buy, leaving your digital or social media manager sad and almost fired.

To clarify, with the tips provided bellow I hope to give you some answers (or just food for thought) on the issue of:

'I have 135k Twitter followers and have not sold anything to them yet', or 'Facebook picture of our new product got 200k likes and 100 reshares, but only 10 people order it from our shop' and etc.

I know these are very childish-silly kinds of examples, but I hope, you know what I mean. Let's see how slacktivism of SNS users may be transformed into some real sales. I will hope it will be possible to conclude after I explain some possible reasons of the existing gap between 'online intentions' and 'offline actions'.

1. Time is money.

This conclusion may seem quite obvious, but the biggest concern of nowaday lives is time, there is always not enough hours to sleep, not enough minutes to talk and not enough years to make our dreams come true. Many web designers and development companies have already understood this idea and applied to their interfaces, making everything as simply as it can possibly be. Therefore, every business trying to sell products needs to simplify purchasing experience. Online shops was a partial solution to a problem.

On the other hand, if you compare a number of received 'Likes' with your sales statistics, the difference may be explained by the 'instantaneous factor'. The nature of 'Like' or '+1' button suggests its being the easiest way of showing agreement/support/approval/emapthy and many other feelings and emotions (yeah, at this point you might ask where is the 'Unlike' or 'Hate' option).  Whilst the process of considering what was 'Liked' takes a while, with a high tendency towards 'not to buy' desicion. My conclusion here is that social media are great for PR and marketing purposes, but it is important to keep in mind their rather entertaining character. Thus, you can and should promote your stuff online, but not put many expectations on the instant sales growth.

In this respect, I think if there was a social network for shopaholics with the initial aim of 'selling and buying' with not just 'Like' but 'Buy' buttons, it would be really successful. People would create their 'shopper profiles' and post 'look what I`ve just bought' statuses. To some extent my point can be proved with the example of Russian social network vk.com where there are thousands of 'VK groups' (communities) where people only promore and sell '100% non fake Ray-Bin glasses from Vietnam'.

Conclusion: the longer it takes for a customer to proceed from initial seeing ('Liking') of your product to actual 'here is my money I want this' phase; the less likely is the chance of completing a purchase.

What to do:

• have online shop - have direct links on you SNS accounts (posts) to the online store; 
• if you don't have online store - have your adress and opening hours and all the important information regarding the purchase written AS CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE IN A PLACE WHERE YOUR CUSTOMER SEES IT (not where YOU think it should be)

P.S. Yeah, right, I am talking about how time is expensive these days and made you spent almost 15 valuable minutes reading this extra-long article....Sorry for that. :) 

Come back tomorrow and you will have even more shocking impressive fascinating tip based on the findings of my recent research! 

Take care! :)