Bad-blogger Poster Children

Eeek! This is the reason most blogs fail - there is a general lack of commitment to the blog and keeping it up to date. I am the bad-blogger poster child.

Hm. Let's discuss this in a corporate setting, because really, it's one thing if I get distracted and forget to post for a few days - I'm an individual who attempts to make time (sometimes, sometimes not) to put my two cents out into the collective Internet. If we go back to basics, my understanding of a corporate blog is to offer:

1 - A unique perspective that offers value to the reader. Who cares if it's the millionth blog about the company picnic. Tell me something I care about about the industry, the trends or something else related to your company / products.
2 - A non-sales message. If I wanted a sales message, I'd visit your corporate site. See point #1 - give me something I care about.
3 - Brevity. Like all good messaging, you want the reader to leave with a nugget of information and ideally the curiosity of wanting to know more. Less is more. If I want to learn more, I'll Google you.
4 - Updated material, ideally daily or every other day. Why else would I visit a blog unless there was new and interesting information there? (OK, I promise to try to be better about that ;-))

So, how can a business make a blog work for them? I think like in all marketing communications, there needs to be an understanding about why they're blogging, and what value it'll bring to the company. After all, time is money. If a blog is an attempt to be seen as cool, hip or somehow trendy then it is destined to fail. A blog needs to arrive from a genuine source and have a relevant message. Otherwise it's just some more hot air from talking heads.

Guerillas in the mist

"What is Guerilla marketing anyway?" I keep asking myself. What does it mean? why is it important and most of all, is it still relevant.

guerilla marketing

Unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Information

Coined by Jay Conrad Levinson, guerilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.

Source: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/guerilla_marketing/

Hm. ok. That's a pretty generic definition. Let's see what else I can find.

Wikkipedia:

Guerrilla marketing, as described by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1982 book Guerrilla Marketing, is an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget. Such promotions are sometimes designed so that the target audience is left unaware they have been marketed to and may therefore be a form of undercover marketing (also called stealth marketing). (italics mine - Nerdalicious)

It is up to the guerrilla marketer to be creative and devise unconventional methods of promotion. He must use all of his contacts, both professional and personal, and must examine his company and its products, looking for sources of publicity. Many forms of publicity can be very inexpensive, and others are free.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_marketing

So, the gist is that guerilla marketing is a) inexpensive, and b) unusual, c) geared towards small businesses with small budgets and sometimes d) unrecognizable to the target market. I think for all intensive purposes that we'll take item d out of our list since it's also considered stealth marketing. Therefore we're left with a catch-phrase that summarizes an approach that's friendly to small business and their constraints and implies creativity, but like my previous posting, there's no mention of metrics, strategy or actual tactics.

The next time someone wants to give you some guerilla marketing, ask for a couple of things. Like their definition of what it means, what tactics do they consider guerilla in nature and what will be the measurable results of the campaign. After all, a catchy name does not excuse a marketer from justifying why you're spending money.

History and Viral Marketing Defined and Discussed.

So, an official posting. First, a bit of background - I currently work in an account manager position at an Ottawa-based marketing firm. We have some great clients and staff, but my problem is with management. Particularly the 'do as i say, not as I do' model of leadership, but that's another blog when I'm no longer legally contracted to be nice.

One of the things that really gets my wick where I work is the lack of attention to what marketing terms actually mean. So, with the goal of clarifying, let me define 'Viral Marketing'.

Definition

viral marketing

Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

Source: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/

So. Viral marketing is dependent on a couple of things:
1 - content that is useful to the end user. So useful they want to share it.
2 - a sales message that comes through in the advertising of the content
3 - that the content is distributed wide enough that it catches on with the desired target market. (Note that last part - Marketing isn't about feeling good fluffy stuff. Noooo. It needs to resonate with the intended target market so that an outcome is received, whether it's increased webpage views and increased sales conversions or increased media coverage to change a public perception or whatever. But I digress.)

So, the next time someone pulls out a marketing term like 'viral marketing', ask them - Why are we doing this? What do we (the advertiser) want to achieve out of this? How are we going to measure it? What's our achievement bar? Who is the content for? Why should they share it? How will they share it? How can we make it easier to share? Do we have a way of getting it out there?

If these simple questions can't be answered, then run away. Quickly. I mean it.

Next up - Guerrilla Marketing. I'm not bananas about it.

Thanks for reading my marketing rant - all comments and questions are welcome. Have a great day.

Intro Post

Well - everything needs a beginning, and this is it for Nerd Nuggets.
Who am I? I'm a woman in her late 20's in Ottawa, with a thing for marketing, crafting and the web. I'm also a marketer trying to figure out a career path in this town.
My goal is to add points of insight to this blog - not just complaints or moaning but marketing and business observations, as well as some insight to what it's like to figure out a career and job hunt in a town that claims to booming.
As always, feedback and comments are welcome. After all, isn't that what the web is about? ;-)