The 17 Rs of Mobile Marketing (Jeanne Hopkins from HubSpot)

• 44% of the US cell phone population, owns a smart phone (up from 35% in August)
• 17R’s of Mobile
• Review analytics
• Relevant
• Request feedback
• Recruit customers and prospects
• Registering for your programs should be easy
• Rate the usefulness of your campaigns to your subscribers
• Regional messages can be valuable
• Reminders about time sensitive information
• Respect (frequency)
• Return status information
• Respond
• Record – documenting concerns or complaints
• Responsible – be brief, yet tantalizing
• Referral – 72% of small businesses have not yet incorporated mobile
• Rely – rely on right software to deploy. Measurement
• Reality – growing marketing segment. Need to understand why and how people are using mobile in your market
• Rapid – be willing to improve on the “fly”
• Run a test campaign before the full campaign

“They track the ROI of television ads the same way [they do for social media]?”  That was the phrase that got me loving the video below.  Take a listen, and then continue reading below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auiczd4OUms[/youtube]

Having worked in traditional marketing (print, tv, outdoor, etc) for a number of years, I’ve noticed this same phenomenon.  Because social media is new, it gets scrutinized much more than traditional marketing.  Did anyone ever know the ROI of spending $2 million on a SuperBowl ad?  Or of an ad in People magazine?  Or a billboard in Times Square?  No!  Sure, you saw a spike in sales, but how do you really know that all of the spike was due to the ad, and not something else that took place at the same time.

In addition, social media isn’t all about a short-term hit. It’s about engaging with your customer and gaining their trust, so that when they do need to purchase, they’ll come to you.  They may just go directly to your site, and not click on a “trackable” link.

As the girl in the video says, “Good companies understand that listening and engaging on social media will pay off in the long run.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Try showing this video to your Schmoo and see what s/he says :-)

What do you think? Do you agree with the video? Does social media get held to higher standards?

**This a follow up article to the LIVE coverage of the Lufthansa A380 inaugural flight to JFK**

On Tuesday, Shashank Nigam from Simpliflying called me and asked “What are you doing this weekend?” Knowing him, I knew that was probably trouble! Apparently Lufthansa was going to be flying the Airbus A380 from Frankfurt to JFK for the first time on Monday, SimpliFlying was invited, and the press group was leaving on Saturday. While I love to travel, this was very last minute, but given the opportunity, I said yes, of course. I didn’t realize, just how incredible this opportunity would be.

From flying business class, to a tour of the maintenance hangar, a tour of every inch of the plane, to interviews of the pilots, head of maintenance, a visit to the cockpit dinner overlooking the runway, this was certainly the experience of a lifetime. The A380 is not new to Lufthansa, nor is it new to Airbus, but Lufthansa is set to be the largest A380 operator in Europe. Airbus currently has 244 orders from airlines, Lufthansa being #3 with 15 planes, after Emirates and Singapore Airlines. Each A380 customer has the ability to customize the plane to their liking.

Welcome to the A380!

The Airbus A380 is a double decker plane with the 2^nd floor spanning the entire length of the plane. The two passenger decks have a total area the same as three tennis courts! Economy class is on the bottom floor and Business/First Class is on the 2^nd floor. It seats 526 passengers (420 in economy), which is 40% more than a Boeing 747. Overall, here are a few of the features of the plane that make it the incredible plane that it is:

• Reduced noise foot print
• Lowest fuel burn per seat (20% less than Boeing 747-400)
• Overall improved comfort level
• 3 in-flight cameras, including a front facing view from the top of the plane, a rear view, and a view looking straight down. (This greatly enhanced my experience during takeoff and landing, particularly because I was in the middle section so wasn’t able to see out the windows.)

Here’s a look at each seating class:

Economy Class

The one feature that stands out in Economy is “living space”, which includes not only the seat pitch, but the overall room and legroom the passenger feels. The seats were very comfortable, and reclined significantly more than other Economy seats I’ve felt, which is important on a long flight. Each seat also has an individual TV with movies, games and TV shows. The Economy Class level is designed with multiple partitions, giving the feeling of a smaller plane, although it seats 420 passengers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur45UUuB1Cw[/youtube]

Business Class

Not only did I receive a tour of the Business Class section while the plane was in the hangar, but I was lucky enough to be seated in this section for the flight from Frankfurt to JFK. What stood out to me in this class, was the superior service and attention I received from the flight attendants. In addition, the seats reclined fully into flat beds (although with an 8% pitch, which I found slightly uncomfortable), and included a massager, which I loved.

The menu, prepared by chef David Burke, was definitely not your typical “airline food”. Appetizers included fresh shrimp or a caesar salad, and entrees included chicken or a red snapper. For dessert, I had “cheesecake lollipops”. Yum! The only negative thing I noticed which was not even to do with the plane, was the lack of water bottles, which is important on a long flight to prevent dehydration. Each seat had access to a private TV, power outlet and a USB port, although wireless internet is not yet available.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOSSp83enl4[/youtube]

First Class

The First Class cabin seats just 8 passengers. Overall, it seems their goal is to make the passenger feel like they’re not on a plane. The walls are light brown suede and the seats are real leather. There are no overhead bins, instead, the passengers stow their belongings in personal closets. The floors are specially insulated for noise control. One of the features that differs from the Emirates A380 is how Lufthansa handles privacy. On the Emirates A380, seats are enclosed in private rooms, whereas, Lufthansa felt it was important for passengers to be able to choose the level of privacy they prefer throughout the flight. While working on your computer, your screen can be down. When you’re sleeping, a screen ascends between the two seats and partially around your seat. The First Class cabin also has noise control built in.

From the extra insulated floor, to the sound insulation curtain separating it from Business Class, and sound insulation in the fuselage. The other unique feature is the humidity level control – first of its kind in an aircraft– has a significant impact on how tired you feel after a flight. Normally humidity levels in First Class are 5-8%, but on this flight, it’s increased to 22-25%. The washrooms are more “room” than “wash” to me. Not only was the design beautiful, but a changing room was built-in, giving lots of space to change. There are also urinals, which apparently is a nice feature – and also a first on commercial aircraft!

With a First Class ticket, you are entitled to use the First Class Terminal at the Frankfurt airport. Lufthansa is the only airline with this service, which offers service from security check-in to boarding, including private bedrooms, offices, showers, spa services, a dining room and a cigar lounge.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxLC-F3hg5c[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYJCI4kzdsc[/youtube]

Takeoff and Landing

Landing was not as smooth as I had heard it would be, but I suspect that was due to the weather when we were arriving. Takeoff felt very smooth, especially given the size of the plane.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_ESS38HmIA[/youtube]

Here are my photos from the trip: Photos from Day 1 (hangar tour, dinner, first class terminal)

Photos from Day 2 (the flight and ceremony at JFK)

Overall, this is an incredible plane – I recommend flying on it if you have the opportunity to!  Have you flown on the A380?  What are your thoughts?

I just landed in Frankfurt, Germany. Why am I here?  To fly to JFK.  Makes sense, right?  :-) Lufthansa is flying the Airbus A380 from Frankfurt to JFK on Monday morning, and I’m going as part of their press trip, representing SimpliFlying.  The plane is double decker the entire length of the plane, and looks incredible inside, with features such as low noise, a bar, circulated air that helps with jet lag and more.  Below are my photos and tweets.  I’ll be blogging more over on SimpliFlying, but wanted to post some things here as well.  Check back for more!

Photos from Day 1 (hangar tour, dinner, first class terminal)

Social Media Examiner (in partnership with BlogWorld) is happy to announce an online event designed to help marketers and business owners quickly achieve blogging success—Blogging Success Summit 2011. It’s a live online conference designed to help you master blogging for business, empowering you to quickly attract and connect with customers (and prospects). The industry’s leading blogging pros will show you how.

Join 23 experts, including Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra, Scott Monty (head of social media, Ford), Darren Rowse (co-author, ProBlogger), Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Debbie Weil (author, The Corporate Blogging Book), Douglas Karr (co-author, Corporate Blogging for Dummies); experts from McDonald’s, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, Sony, and Procter & Gamble; plus Joe Pulizzi (co-author,Get Content Get Customers), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Jay Baer (co-author, The Now Revolution), Chris Garrett (co-author, ProBlogger), Dave Garland (author, Smarter, Faster, Cheaper), Mike Volpe (VP of marketing, HubSpot), Rick Calvert (CEO, BlogWorld) and Michael Stelzner (Social Media Examiner)—just to mention a few (scroll down to see full list)!

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There’s a new trend on Twitter where people create a “news daily” on a site called paper.li. I’m not a fan of them, but was really curious about what others thought, so asked people’s thought on Twitter this week, and even ran a poll.  First, here’s a bit about Paper.li and how it works…

Essentially, paper.li automatically creates a newspaper for you on a daily basis from content that comes through your twitter stream.  They either create it based on the links in the Twitter stream of the “curator” (person creating the newspaper) and the people they’re following, from a hashtag, or from a particular list. Then it sends a tweet something like this.

The Joel Richman Daily is out! http://bit.ly/fsd7cm ▸ Top stories today by @muckrack @bostonmarketer

December 7, 2010 11:58 am via Paper.liReplyRetweetFavorite

@xylem

Joel Richman

(sorry Joel, I don’t mean to pick on you — it was just a recent example :-))

Now I don’t know exactly what tweet of mine was in that Daily, but normally, it’s really nothing exciting.  It says “top stories by @BostonMarketer“, but it’s not a blog post I wrote.  Sometimes it’s just a regular article I tweet or something I’ve said. Or, on my @WebinarListings account, it’s one of the many tweets we send out about upcoming webinars.  Are these tweets worthy of being in a newspaper?  I’d like to think they are, but normally they’re just every-day tweets.

So, really, what value is it adding?

Do the curator’s follower’s get a benefit out of seeing these random tweets in a huge newspaper?  I don’t.  I see enough of the tweets of people I follow.  Maybe it’s more valuable for people just getting started on Twitter? Does anyone actually read these?

Does the person who gets mentioned in the newspaper appreciate seeing his/her name in lights?  I don’t.  It’s automated, so it’s not like it was manually selected for being a particularly interesting tweet. And, out of the many people in the daily, you weren’t specifically selected to be in the automated tweet. (by the way, you can opt for paper.li to not mention you in the automated tweets).

Maybe it’s more value for the person creating the newspaper?  But since it’s automated, and not based on highly retweeted tweets, I’m not sure why it’s any better than just looking through your Twitter stream. And, if that’s the purpose, then what’s the value in sending a tweet with only a couple of people it mentions?

But, maybe this is just me.  So, I asked on Twitter, and ran a poll.

A Few Comments From Twitter

Looking for someone to say why the LIKE the paper.li "dailies" people put out. Any supporters? Or, if you do one, why?

December 7, 2010 11:26 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@bostonmarketer

Rachel Levy

(Note that my question was looking for supporters, and I only got 8 supportive comments in total, and many more negatives.)

Positives

@bostonmarketer I have a paper.li set up for my corporate acct, just to read it for myself. It helps me wade thru tons of content.

December 7, 2010 11:31 am via RockMeltReplyRetweetFavorite

@kehutchinson

Kate Hutchinson

@bostonmarketer I use it to see what I missed the previous day from a list

December 7, 2010 5:45 pm via twidroyd (original)ReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffespo

Jeff Esposito

@bostonmarketer I like paper.li dailies b/c they provide a quick + effective means of offering content in an easy-to-digest format

December 7, 2010 5:23 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@admelfo

Albert D. Melfo

Negatives

Today's pet peeve-- paper.li "dailies" that attribute stories I linked to... to me. Bad. Awful

December 8, 2010 5:58 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@DougH

Doug Haslam

@bostonmarketer i hate the dailies - it's like: why don't you just share everything on twitter? very counter-intuitive IMO

December 7, 2010 12:01 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@KEVINgotbounce

kevin mandeville

@bostonmarketer Voted, and commented, too! Hate them: I've been disappointed too many times.

December 7, 2010 7:15 pm via TwInboxReplyRetweetFavorite

@sarahebourne

Sarah Bourne

And, the Poll…

I also created a poll on TwtPoll, and here are the results, and comments:

So out of the 30 people who took the poll, a max of 8 people supported the concept (including the comments).  And, that’s being very generous… I allowed people to select multiple answers, and I’ve counted them multiple times.

Given all these responses to my question and the polls, I still don’t understand the value.

Thoughts? Are you a fan of these?  What’s the point?  It seems like he major benefit is to the people publishing the paper.  If that’s so, then why tweet it?  Why mention people?

When was the last time your company’s customer service department made  a “random act of kindnesss?” Well, for Constant Contact, it was just the other day, and I was the recipient of their generosity.  Here’s what happened…

On Tuesday evening, I got a direct message (a private message) on Twitter from Constant Contact saying:

“Could you DM me a good number to reach you at? I’d like to give you a call about your account. :) – Marisa”

Intrigued, I called back right away.  Marisa informed me that she was going to give me a credit for one month of service, which for me is worth $40.  Why?  Just because! Wow, how nice!  So, yes, it could have had to do with my earlier tweet that said “Yea! @constantcontact now works with Chrome!!”  But, still… I didn’t expect any response from Constant Contact about my tweet, not to mention a gift!

Very smart move, Constant Contact.  I have always been a big fan of Constant Contact, but when you give someone something free, particularly unexpectedly, you make a stronger advocate out of them.   In addition, because I thought it was so nice, I posted something on Twitter, Facebook and am obviously writing this blog post.  The Facebook update got 3 “likes”, and I’m sure there were many more of my 1,000 Facebook friends and 8,300 Twitter followers who saw my posts, but didn’t comment.

Wow, check it out! @constantcontact just called and gave me a free month on my account! Hanukah came early this year. GREAT #customerservice

November 23, 2010 8:16 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@bostonmarketer

Rachel Levy

Then, because I was still so impressed the next day, I posted again about Constant Contact’s new Chrome interface and got 2 responses…

@bostonmarketer They added Chrome support!?!?!? Wooo Hoooo!!!!! cc: @constantcontact

November 24, 2010 1:00 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mikeconaty

Mike Conaty

@bostonmarketer Nice I was getting annoyed having to use I.E. to access

November 24, 2010 1:08 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@CaronElectric

Max ServiceManager

So, for $40 Constant Contact got a more committed and loyal customer, 5 other interactions with the brand, and countless other people knowing about the situation.  Priceless.

Have you seen other companies do this? Are there any other advantages you see of customer service departments doing this?

RSS feeds are one of my favorite online tools, and I’m finding that most people don’t know what they are or how they can be used. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication… so, does that help?  Probably not :-)  Let me explain with an analogy about mail delivery.

You’ve Got Mail

Every day, the mailman* collects mail from everyone sending you mail, and delivers it to your home.  What if there were no mailman or post office?  Well, that would mean you’d need to go to each person’s house and pick up your mail and bring it home.  And since you have no way of knowing if someone has mail for you, you waste a lot of time stopping by everyone’s house just to see if you have mail.

Person mailing letter		Website
Letter		New Blog Post (or Information)
Mailman		RSS Feed
Mailbox		RSS Reader

Stopping by everyone homes to see if you have mail, is what life without RSS is like.  For every blog or website you’re interested in reading, you have to go to the website (“house”) and find out if there are new posts (“mail”).  That could take forever!  But, RSS does the job of the mailman for you.  It goes out to every website you have subscribed to and checks to see if there is any new information there.  It then picks up the new posts (“mail”) and puts it into your RSS Reader (“mailbox”).  Very easy!  That way, you just have to check your RSS Reader, and everything you’re interested in, is all in one place.

The other benefit of RSS is that it keeps track of which posts you’ve read or haven’t read.  So, if you leave and come back, you won’t forget where you left off.  You can also mark important items with stars.

“But I don’t read blogs!”

There are many websites that use RSS Feeds that aren’t blogs.  Here are other websites that use RSS and other uses for RSS feeds:

• Reading the newspaper online? Take a look at the New York Times.  If you subscribe to their RSS Feed, it will neatly organize all the articles in one long list in your RSS Reader.
• Looking for a job? Run a search on Monster, and instead of getting one email with all the listings, better track which jobs you’ve looked at by subscribing to your search via RSS.
• Looking for a new couch? Run a search on CraigsList and subscribe to it via RSS.  You don’t have to run your search every day, as each new item will just come right into your RSS Reader.
• Tracking mentions of your name or your company’s name? If you use Google Alerts to search your name, instead of getting the search via email, turn it into an RSS Feed, and get all your searches in one folder.
• Watching for certain keywords on Twitter? Just create the search on Twitter, and subscribe to the feed.

We encourage the use of RSS Feeds at WebinarListings, because it’s a calendar, and people will know what’s been newly added to the calendar without having to check back each day.

Now What?

Well, first you need to decide which RSS Reader you want to use.  I like Google Reader (and I like everything Google :-)) because I think it’s the most user-friendly. But, you can use Outlook, Firefox or the multitude of other readers out there. When you subscribe to an RSS Feed, a list of the most popular ones will come up and you can choose the one you want.

When you’ve found a blog or search you want to subscribe to, look for the RSS Feed button (the orange button above) and click it! It’s usually located near the top of the site, in the browser bar, or in the footer of the website.  In some cases you have to click to subscribe again once you’re inside your RSS Feader, but it’s very self-explanatory.  You can even create folders to organize your information.  Then just take a look at your RSS Reader regularly and everything you’ve subscribed to will be there.

* I say mailman, and mean that also to include women

(Image credit: mailbox, others)

Do you use RSS Feeds?  Can you think of any other uses for them?

Monitoring is one of the areas of social media that I am, and I think many others are, limited in my knowledge. How do you calculate ROI?  What should you be measuring?  What tools are best to use to measure?  Well, on October 5th, I will be finding out the answers to these questions at the Monitoring Social Media conference (#MSM10).

And the good news for you is that the nice people at the MSM offered me 2 tickets to give away for FREE to the readers of my blog. Here’s how you enter… Tweet this message:

Get 10% off tickets to Monitoring Social Media Boston http://bit.ly/MSMbos #MSM10 with promo code “BOSTON10”

Two people who tweet that message will be selected to attend at no charge. You can enter only once.

Here are the topics that will be covered by Katie Delahaye Paine from KD Paine & Partners,  Zach Hofer-Shall from Forrester Research, Amber Naslund of Radian6, and more:

• Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services
• Brand and Reputation Management
• Sentiment Detection and Analysis
• Data Quality and Filtering
• Identifying and Connecting with Influencers
• Beyond Listening: Measurement and ROI
• The Future of Social Media Monitoring
• Case studies and Best Practice

I’m looking forward to the day… will you be there?

Have you heard of the new Fox show Lone Star? I had seen one commercial for it, but it really caught my eye, when I received an email a couple of weeks ago from Klout.

Of course, I responded to the email and this past Thursday, I received a HUGE box in the mail:

And the following inside the box: cocktail napkins, 4 plastic wine glasses, 4 plastic beer mugs, plastic ice bucket, soft cooler, bottle opener, corkscrew, 2 posters, tub of popcorn, t-shirt, 2 show posters and a DVD of the pilot of the show. All branded with the Lone Star name.  Awesome!

So what’s Klout? Klout calls itself the “Standard of Influence” and rates Twitter users and gives them a score of their clout based on reach, amplification and network.  In a few seconds, it gives you your Klout Score by combining factors such as the number of lists the Twitter user is on, your retweets, and your mentions… all of which are factors that are much more important than the commonly looked at “follower numbers”.  How many followers you have is irrelevant if no one is listening to you, and Klout attempts to quantify how much people are listening to you.  It’s  a great measure, and is quickly becoming the “standard”, as they say.  I have looked up many people I know from Twitter, and the scores seem reasonable based on how influential I know these people to be.

What Klout is starting to do, is partner with companies to give offers to people who have high Klout scores.  I have received a few like this (Covergirl, Starbucks in partnership with BzzAgent), but this was, by far, the most impactful presentation.

The idea is that I am supposed to throw a party with the contents of the box, and watch the pilot episode with my friends.  Brilliant thinking Fox!  Here are a few reasons why it’s great marketing:

• Gets people excited about the build-up to the show
• Makes enjoying the show a social activity
• Makes the receiver of the package (me!) feel special
• Gives people something to talk about after watching the pilot and enjoying the “party in a box”
• Targets people who are influential

Fox has also coupled this with other social media tactics, including a Twitter account (@LoneStarOnFox), use of QR codes in print ads, strong use of hashtag (#LoneStar), a Facebook page and a sweepstakes on Facebook.

Overall, a very smart social media campaign by Fox.  The major feedback I’d have for them is to start earlier.  I received the party box on Thursday, the premier is on Monday, and I’m supposed to plan and have a party in that 4 day period.  Also looking at their Twitter page, it looks like thy just started promoting it last minute, with only 300 followers (although follower number aren’t everything, right?). Their Facebook page has been  active longer, but still only has 1,900 fans, a small amount for a national show. It’s important to remember that social media is a slow build medium, so you need to start early!

So, did I have the party and watch the show?  I didn’t have the party, as it wasn’t enough notice for me, but I DID watch the pilot I received.  I loved it!  The cast is great, and the plot is just a twisted mess of lies (in an intriguing way!). I’m looking forward to seeing more of it, and will certainly be watching the premier on Monday!

Have you seen campaigns like this?  What do you think of the idea of this campaign for “influencers”?