Friends With Benefits

by BAREFOOT, DARRENSZABO, JULIE

• ISBN13: 9781593271992
• ISBN10: 1593271999
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-11-01
• Publisher: No Starch Press

Summary

The rules of marketing have changed. With viral YouTube videos racking up millions of views, popular bloggers reaching more readers than their traditional media counterparts, and Facebook mavens influencing thousands of their friends, marketing professionals simply cannot ignore the web's new communication channels. But this new brand of marketing can be intimidating if you're unfamiliar with the new tools, the evolving culture, and the unwritten rules surrounding them. Friends with Benefits: Online Marketing with Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and More is a tactical guide, filled with tricks, tips, and real-world case studies that show you how to reach out to the new online influencers to increase your company's online visibility and bring more visitors to your website. You'll learn how to create viral campaigns, craft a compelling social media pitch, and market effectively inside intimidating social media channels, where honesty and connections are far more important than the size of your marketing budget.

Author Biography

*Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo have run social media marketing campaigns for national retailers like Best Buy, Future Shop and Brother International. They've been quoted as experts on social media on the CBC and BBC, and in Wired magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other magazines, TV, and radio programs. Founders of Northern Voice, Canada's social media conference, they regularly speak around North America on social media, marketing, and emerging technology. Darren has 10,000 daily readers at DarrenBarefoot.com.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xxi
Introduction: A Window into the World of Social Media Marketing	p. xxiii
How to Learn the Lingo	p. xxiv
Who Is This Book For?	p. xxv
This Book Isn't for You If	p. xxv
Getting Around: What You'll Learn	p. xxvi
What Is Social Media?	p. 1
The Rise of the Social Network	p. 3
Five Fundamentals of Social Media	p. 4
It's About Democracy: A Communication Revolution	p. 4
It's About Community: We Are Family	p. 7
It's About Collaboration: Two Heads (or Millions) Really Are Better Than One	p. 7
It's About Scope: The Infinite Internet	p. 10
It's About Authenticity: A Cult of Honesty	p. 10
Social Media Channels: What Are They and How Can You Use Them?	p. 11
What Is Social Media Marketing?	p. 13
Why Should You Embrace Social Media Marketing?	p. 14
How Does Social Media Fit with Your Marketing Goals?	p. 15
Now for Some Sober Second Thoughts	p. 16
Hitting the Trail: What You'll Need to Get Started	p. 18
Time, Time, and More Time	p. 18
Boss Buy-In	p. 18
The Buddy System	p. 19
The Best Books and Blogs	p. 19
Surfing the Wave of Change	p. 19
Get Social Media Ready	p. 21
RSS 101	p. 22
RSS Feeds and Readers	p. 24
Mainlining Data	p. 26
Entering the Blogosphere: The Basics of Launching a Corporate Blog	p. 28
How Do You Start?	p. 29
Should You Build Your Own Blogging Software?	p. 30
Who Should Blog?	p. 30
Why Should You Write a Blog?	p. 31
What Should You Write About?	p. 33
How Often Should You Blog?	p. 33
How Will You Manage All the Feedback?	p. 34
Where Should the Blog Live?	p. 34
A Few Blogging Don'ts	p. 35
Prepping Your Website for Social Media Outreach	p. 37
Link Me Up	p. 38
The Social Media Resource Page	p. 39
The Social Media News Release	p. 43
Flagging a Ride: Finding the Right Bloggers and Communities	p. 47
Three Buckets of Blogs	p. 48
Size Matters, and Yes, It Is a Popularity Contest	p. 49
Learn to Read the Road Signs	p. 50
Finding Blogs with Google	p. 51
Metrics: Making a List, Checking It Twice	p. 52
Google PageRank and Trends	p. 53
Technorati, BlogPulse, IceRocket the List Goes On	p. 55
Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast	p. 56
Count RSS Subscribers	p. 57
Be a Bit Skeptical	p. 58
Don't Overlook Anecdotal Evidence	p. 58
Blogrolls: Who Is Your BFF?	p. 58
A Little Help from Your Friends	p. 59
Trust Your Instincts	p. 60
Netiquette: Miss Manners for the Web	p. 63
Listen First	p. 64
Take Baby Steps	p. 65
Make Friends	p. 67
Lay Your Cards on the Table	p. 67
Bloggers Aren't Journalists	p. 69
Your Reputation Precedes You	p. 70
Don't Be a Social Media Spammer	p. 71
Don't Fib	p. 72
Who Are These New Influences, Anyway?	p. 74
Margaret Mason, Shopping Diva at Mighty Goods	p. 74
Muhammad Saleem on Getting Dugg	p. 75
For Marshall kirkpatrick, It's Just the Facts, Ma'am	p. 76
Etiquette Cheat Sheet	p. 77
Stick Out Your Thumb: Devising Your Pitch	p. 79
Drums or Smoke Signals: Which Channel to Choose?	p. 82
Pitch Tactics We've Tried	p. 85
An ôIlluminatingö Email Pitch	p. 85
Other Ways to Woo	p. 86
Other Blogger Outreach Campaigns We Like	p. 91
It's Not Always About the Pitch: Finding Other Creative Ways to Get Noticed	p. 93
What Not to Do	p. 94
Don't Bribe the Border Guard	p. 96
Rules for Following Up	p. 97
Measuring Success: How to Monitor the Web	p. 99
What Does Success Look Like?	p. 100
Be Realistic, Be Humble	p. 105
Tricks of the Trade: Tools for Measuring Success	p. 105
Web Analytics: Your Foreign Language Phrase Book	p. 105
Google Alerts: An Oldie but a Goodie	p. 106
Web Monitoring 2.0	p. 106
The One-Stop Web Monitoring Shop	p. 109
Talking Back: How to Respond to Posts	p. 1ll
If You Don't Measure, You Can't Manage	p. 113
Is Social Media Marketing Risky Business?	p. 115
Your Campaign Doesn't Get off the Ground	p. 116
Secrets to Building Long-Term Relationships	p. 117
You're Just an Average Joe	p. 118
Blogger Backlash	p. 118
The Crowd Talks Back	p. 120
You Get Rejected	p. 121
Your Initiative Dies on the Vine	p. 122
Ignoring Other Marketing Channels	p. 124
Too Much Success, Too Soon	p. 125
Not Being Proactivej	p. 126
You Will Be Measured	p. 128
Someone Gets Cold Feet	p. 128
Proceed with Caution, Not Cowardice	p. 129
Damage Control in the Digital Age	p. 131
A Crisis Management Primer	p. 132
Can Social Media Make Your Crisis Worse?	p. 133
The Internet Insta-Crisis	p. 133
The Predictable Pile-On	p. 134
The Internet Never Forgets, Remember?	p. 135
Do You Really Have a Crisis on Your Hands?	p. 136
What Is Social Media's Role in Crisis Communications?	p. 139
Rules for Making Social Media Work for You in a Crisis	p. 140
Don't Hide	p. 140
Use Your Blog as a Crisis Management Tool	p. 142
Monitor the Web Closely	p. 142
Clean Up Your Mess with the Right Channels	p. 144
Consider ôSearchö in Your Crisis Strategy	p. 145
Outfit Your Website for a Crisis	p. 146
Social Media Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them	p. 148
Get Yourself a Lightweight Blogging Policy	p. 148
What Does a Blogging Policy Look Like?	p. 149
Test-Run Your Campaign	p. 151
Own Your Social Media Campaign Assets	p. 152
Does MySpace Still Matter?	p. 155
MySpace 101	p. 156
Demographics: Who Goes There?	p. 158
How Does MySpace Work?	p. 159
From Social Platform to Social Phenomenon	p. 160
Marketing with MySpace	p. 161
MySpace Marketing Success Stories	p. 162
Roller Warehouse	p. 162
Weird Al Yankovic: ôWhite and Nerdyö on MySpace	p. 164
Obama Takes the White House with the Help of Social Networks	p. 164
Catering to the MySpace Crowd	p. 165
Banging the Drums with MySpace	p. 166
Tatango and MySpace's Network Effect	p. 168
Tips and Tricks for MySpace Marketers	p. 169
What's Next for MySpace?	p. 170
Understanding Facebook	p. 171
Profiles and the Network Effect	p. 173
Anatomy of a Facebook Profile	p. 174
The Basics	p. 177
Events	p. 178
Groups and pages: Which to use?	p. 178
Market Passively	p. 182
Case Study: Chicken, Biscuits, and Facebook	p. 182
An Appetite for Fun	p. 183
Don't Be Apprehensive	p. 184
Working with Facebook App Developers	p. 186
Advertising on Facebook	p. 187
Case Study: Sharpening Perception with Mystery and Social Networks	p. 188
Case Study: Self-Propelled Video on Facebook	p. 191
The Future of Facebook and the Facebook of the Future	p. 193
Video Marketing with YouTube and Other Video Sharing Sites	p. 195
Why Make YouTube a Marketing Channel?	p. 197
Setting Your Expectations and Measuring Results	p. 198
What Makes a Popular YouTube Video?	p. 200
Funny Beats Pretty	p. 205
The Wisdom of Stealth Videos	p. 206
Your Latest Picture	p. 208
Marketing with YouTube Videos:	p. 209
Set the Stage	p. 210
Pick the Right Title	p. 211
Describe and Lead with a Link	p. 211
Categorize and Tag Responsibly	p. 212
Play Nice with Others	p. 212
Join Groups	p. 212
Curate with Playlists	p. 213
Include Videos in Pitches	p. 214
Feature Videos in Other Communication Channels	p. 214
Annotate Your Videos	p. 214
Case Study: Elastic Path Makes E-commerce Platforms Fun-No, Really	p. 215
YouTube Killed the Video Star	p. 217
The Twitter Revolution	p. 219
From Broadcast to Conversation	p. 220
Getting Started with Twitter	p. 222
Know Your DMs from Your Hash Tags	p. 224
Tweeting Beyond the Browser	p. 226
Tweeting for Fun and Profit	p. 227
Case Study: Insta-Fundraising with Twitter	p. 231
Ten Ways to Be a Jerk on Twitter	p. 233
Beyond the Twitterdome	p. 237
The Power of Crowds: Understanding and Participating in Online Communities	p. 239
Social News and the Wisdom of Crowds	p. 240
Why Marketers Should Care About Social News	p. 241
Using Social News to Build Buzz	p. 242
Social Bookmarking and Crowdsourced Curation	p. 245
A Social Bookmarking Primer	p. 245
How Marketers Can Benefit from Social Bookmarking	p. 249
Should You Build Your Own Social Network?	p. 251
What About Wikipedia?	p. 254
Photo Sharing with Flickr	p. 257
Stand Out in Your Crowd	p. 259
Afterword	p. 261
Recommended Reading	p. 263
Books	p. 263
Blogs and Websites	p. 264
Index	p. 265
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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