Erik Florida

Trust Marketing Community

Posted on 06 / 05 / 10

I was just getting started on this blog, but I am actually going to be a little quiet over here for a while. I am developing a new community called the Trust Marketing Community. I am really excited about the adventure. This will be a great test of my social media, marketing and general web development skills and knowledge. It will also be full of experiments. I will be trying things out that I have not done before. It will be a great learning experience. I really hope the community develops into an active, collaborative group of users. I call it a community, not a blog, or just a website. I want this to be very community driven, “blog posts” will really just be topics, the real meat of the site will be on the comments or discussion. I hope to setup online discussions through twitter and record those on the site as well. I want a lot of elements to be interactive so that the community develops, and its not just readers and bloggers. Speaking of bloggers, I will be looking to get others involved in creating topics and leading discussions as well.

I learned about the Hubspot/Inbound Marketing University (IMU) game early on, and immediately felt it could not be true. After some research I was confident there was no way it was true. Different people reacted different ways when they realized it was fake. Some people realized sooner than others, and fair number of people felt misled. There was a breach of trust in the way such a serious situation was presented, and help was asked for from their community, when the whole thing was a lie. I understand the premise of the game, but a lot of people felt that the implementation left a bad taste in their mouth. As I saw more people having concern I decided it would be an interesting experiment to start a new twitter account directly related to it and start getting involved with the discussion. I wanted to see how I could grow the account, and how people would respond to it. The name was an easy knock-off choice from the recently massively popular spoof account regarding the BP oil spill, @BPGlobalPR. So I created the account @IMUGlobalPR.

In less than 24 hours I had around 50 followers who were actively talking to me on Twitter about the IMU situation. 50 might not sound like a lot, but I wasn’t just going and friending hundreds of people. It was organic. I looked for people who were talking about the subject, joined the conversation, and then got followed in response. I had direct conversations with almost every follower. These discussions and the heart of the problem with the IMU situation lead to a lot of thought regarding trust and relationships.

Business are becoming much more personal. People expect to interact with a business, and they will not do business with a company they do not trust. Building relationships is how we build trust. See my previous post on Converting Social Media Interactions into Leads. Social media has been the major outlet for building relationships and trust with customers. This new community will be about discussing and learning about how we can build that trust. It can range from B2B, B2C, as well as developing your own personal brand and network.

So with all that said, I really hope you will come over to the new site and join in the discussions! I will update this post with a link to the site as soon as it is up and running!

Thank you to all,
Erik Florida

Converting Social Media Interactions Into Leads

Posted on 05 / 08 / 10

Social media ROI (return on investment) is something that is talked about a lot these days. As social media tools are making the switch from personal use to business use, these business want to know that they serve a purpose, that they add value. The big picture idea for any new project in a business ultimately boils down to ROI. Generally, this term refers to monetary gains based off a given investment of time and resources. With social media, I think it is important to view ROI from the perspective of lead generation and customer relations, not sales dollars.

Social media is a long term investment centered around relationship building. Companies are increasingly being expected by consumers to be more human. This is a fundamental change in the way consumers interact with businesses online. Technology has been shrinking the world since boats began allowing people to travel the seas to far away lands. Now the Internet has moved us into a whole new level. In this smaller world, consumers are no longer satisfied with an undefined corporate entity that makes their own decisions about the products we buy.

Consumers want involvement. We want products our way, and we wont settle for less. Brands that are making strides to satisfy the customer, introducing new products, and getting direct feedback are showing consumers that they deserve this. Human interaction is also something consumers are growing to appreciate more and more. Not necessarily a face-to-face interaction, but a human interaction. The Internet put a separation between the consumer and the people behind the business. The only interaction was with a shopping cart graphic.

Companies like Best Buy are showing consumers that they are not just big box electronics stores that spin new technology out of a factory, but they are a company of people. They are passionate about their products, and they want consumers to be able to easily and enjoyably learn about them, and purchase the right item. The human experience at Best Buy starts when a consumer goes on twitter and asks what is the best laptop to buy their kid for art school in the Fall. The positive human interaction carries over to the in-store experience, and then beyond, when one of thousands of Best Buy employee’s who volunteer to help on Twitter, respond to a complaint about the laptop by teaching the user about a setting they could change.

Best Buy suddenly becomes a large group of caring people who know a lot about electronics. Not an electronics warehouse. This is the kind of human interaction consumers are looking for. When businesses begin to understand this and start using social media to create human interactions – trust, relationships, authority, authenticity – they will begin to see the ROI that comes from social media. In the end, it will always come down to dollars and cents. But a successful business must be able to see the benefit in long term goals that may not have an immediate impact on the bottom line. First you must build relationships.

Knowledge is NOT Power

Posted on 05 / 03 / 10

“Knowledge is power” is a very common sentiment that many people support. I have always been a strong supporter of this statement, and have therefore spent the last few years in particular studying, learning, reading, and expanding the breadth of my knowledge.

However, I have been thinking about productivity,  accomplishments, and considering the difference in people who really make it in life, and those who don’t. One might begin to conclude that a pursuit of knowledge is at the source of those who reach success. I have concluded recently that knowledge is not even that high on the list of reasons behind success. The top reason: Action!

Knowledge is like a loaded gun. It’s an opportunity for powerful action. A gun in and of itself, does not kill people. Now I don’t want to start a heated sociological debate here, but in broad concept, here me out. If you took the entire US military arsenal and put it on a deserted island in the Pacific, you would be amassing the largest concentrated arsenal in the world. All those weapons, all that power, all in one place. Yet, if no one ever visits the island, if no one ever picks up those weapons and fires them, they accomplish nothing. They are meaningless and irrelivent. Hitler didn’t nearly conquer the world by building the largest arsenal, he did it by attacking. He took swift and decisive actions. The actions are what create results. The tools and the knowledge are only a basis for the action.

Amassing large quantities of knowledge is worthless. No power is attained by learning every piece of knowledge in Steven Hawking’s head. Putting that knowledge into action is where the magic happens. That is how power is attained, that is where success is born.

The point here is this: while spending time, learning, reading, amassing knowledge – as we all should be doing – do not forget to take action!

Entrepreneurs often learn this the hard way. It’s principles like being first to market, and releasing software in beta. The point is to take action. In order to succeed in a business, you must take action, you must sell your product. If Microsoft spent 10 years developing Windows 3.1 so that it would be the best operating system anyone could imagine, they would have gone out of business before release. Stop worrying about the blue screen of death and take action – sell the product.

Taking action leads to success. Knowledge creates a basis for better decision-making surrounding that action. It allows us to think on our feet quicker, make better decisions, and ultimately, achieve even greater success.

In many ways this blog is my start at taking action. I have been studying design, marketing, and digital communications for years. I have been practicing, and thinking and reading. Now it is time to apply these principles. To take action on what I have learned, and to learn more, through doing. This blog provides an outlet for my thoughts, and forces me to organize ideas into valuable chunks of information. My web designs are the fruit of my labor. They are the action I am taking to advance my skills, my career, and ultimately, my success in life.

So take that hobby or career move, or business you’ve wanted to start, and stop learning, stop thinking, and take some action.

Do at least one thing, everyday, that is an action towards your longterm goals.

Action leads to success. Action is power.