Do you like or love Facebook? Which is it?

Do you like/love Instagram?

Like or love. Big difference.

What does this have to do with targeting? Everything.

Yesterday, Facebook bought photo sharing app Instagram. Why? Not because they have a billion dollars extra to give up, but because Instagram, unlike Facebook, has a passionate user base.

Passionate user base. That’s what one billion dollars costs.

Facebook is a utility. It’s something that is common. Like my car, it’s something I use everyday. Instagram is something I love using because it makes me happy.

That’s the difference between Passion Brands and generic brands. And generic brands by their very nature, are boring.

Boring businesses rely on targeting. That’s why Google makes so much money. The vast majority of businesses sell more of the same stuff. No passion. Just another transaction.

Businesses pay Google for ads because they’re so boring and indifferent, that ‘targeting their unique audience’ is the only way they’ll get noticed. Get it?

Need another example? How about Apple? How many people do you know who are obsessive about ‘everything Apple’? You might be one yourself. Just look at what happens when someone posts images from the inside of Apple HQ.

The other problem with targeting is that if you can’t find people talking about the problems your product or service solves, you are going to ditch social media.

You shouldn’t ditch social media.

Social Media is the single biggest opportunity to build a business around your passion. It’s not easy, but building a business that stand for something is a lot more fun than building a business that stands for nothing more than the same.

Take the long-term view and build on passion and values. Target people’s emotions. Not their demographics.

Image credit: Gapingvoid

Why targeting is overrated is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

One blog we love is from photo sharing app Instagram. Why? Because they take a completely different approach to blogging.

Just read what they say their blog is about:

We’re sharing the tools + techniques we’ve learned in bringing photo-sharing to millions of peopl.

Bingo!

Another example?

Last week Instagram released their much anticipated Android app. As a result, Instragam grew over a million users in one day. What does Instagram do?

They write a post about the tools and techniques they used to tackle problems on launch day:

On Tuesday we launched Instagram for Android, and it’s had a fantastic response so far. The last few weeks (on the infrastructure side) have been all about capacity planning and preparation to get everything in place, but on launch day itself the challenge is to find problems quickly, get to the bottom of them, and roll out fixes ASAP. Here are some tools & techniques we used to tackle problems as they arose:

Why is this great?

A few reasons:

1. It helps other entrepreneurs find out how to tackle the same infrastructure problems.
2. It sends a signal to the web community that Instagram is a contributor, much like Firefox and Google contribute to the benefit of the web.

Takeaways: Contribute and help people solve problems. Instagram makes their intent obvious and sometimes being obvious is a good thing.

Related article

• Instagram: Making the common, uncommon (game-changer.net)

Make your content count: Share what others won’t is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Here at Blu Maya, we believe memorable experiences are determined by the memories they provoke.

These memorable experiences will be forever etched into people’s hearts and minds.

But how do you know when you’ve created a memorable experience? How do you know when you’ve made a difference in someone’s life? How do you know when you’ve created a lasting memory? How do you know when you are forever etched into people’s hearts and minds?

Typically you would look to testimonials. But we all know testimonials can be fabricated. So let’s no even pay attention to them.

The new testimonials are going to be stored in people’s blogs, in their tweets, in their Flickr sets, in their Instragrams and in their Facebook Timeline.

Like everything else, there will be many of them. Hopefully all great memories. And the best memories will be talked about in the industry.

Take this list of 11 of the Best Customer Service Stories Ever. These 11 companies, created a moment that will forever be etched in their customers hearts and minds. The stories are so remarkable, it’s impossible not to notice than talk about them.

It’s sad that going above and beyond and doing the right thing for your customers is seen as something remarkable. We should all act this way all the time.

There is tremendous value in “Wowing your customers“. Just ask customers of hosting company Rackspace:

One of my favorite examples of this happened at Rackspace, the managed hosting and cloud computing company. An employee on the phone with a customer during a marathon troubleshooting session heard the customer tell someone in the background that they were getting hungry. As she tells it, “So I put them on hold, and I ordered them a pizza. About 30 minutes later we were still on the phone, and there was a knock on their door. I told them to go answer it because it was pizza! They were so excited.”

I’d have been pretty excited, too, if I were that hungry customer. Another “wow!” moment.

The vast majority of the time, wowing your customers doesn’t cost you much. It’s sad organizations don’t understand and encourage “wow” behaviors.

In my next post, I’ll tell you a few ways you can create lasting memories that will forever be etched in your customers hearts and minds. Stay tuned…

How are you encouraging WOW behavior? is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Social Media is not marketing.

Thinking that it is all about marketing is very short sighted. It’s sexy to think about social media as marketing because of the vast opportunities it opens (plus all those stories you hear) for your business.

So what is the true value of social media?

First let’s exchange the word media for technologies. Social technologies are collaborative solutions inside an enterprise. Much like people collaborate on Twitter in real-time, imagine a combination of Twitter and Facebook inside an organization. These tools already exist.

The key is implementing them insider organizations, not as a marketing tactic, but as a capability.

Kaiser Permanente is an interesting case study in building a social business capability by using social to improve customer service, internal collaboration and market research:

Social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook have helped Kaiser Permanente — the nation’s largest nonprofit health care provider — grow its positive media mentions close to 500% in the last five years.

The article is well worth your time.

The True Value of Social Media is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Social Media is on the CEO’s Agenda:

In a new study by Booz & Company and social marketing software developer Buddy Media, nearly all the companies surveyed say they plan to increase their spending on social media, and 39 percent say they’re going to boost spending substantially. In contrast, 38 percent say that social media is on the CEO’s agenda, and 35 percent say they have a senior executive in charge of social media company-wide.

Finally!

Of course, this space is changing so fast that you need to be committed. But here’s the thing: Many companies still see social media as nothing more than a tactic.

Strategy Determines Tactics

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” – Sun Tzu

Yes, that’s a very important quote. Because when you think about tactics first, you copy everyone’s tactics. This leads to commoditization. This herd behavior is easy to detect, by evidence of those popular ‘Lists Posts’ on the blogosphere that confirm what everyone else is doing.

This is a BIG NO-NO.

Strategy is much more abstract. It’s an idea. But an idea grounded in a point of view. Your own point of view. Not what everyone else is thinking.

If your point of view is that social media is about connecting on a deeper level with customers, then your tactics have to be aligned to accomplish that. If you’re of the point of view that social media activities need to reflect a direct R.O.I., then your tactics need to be aligned to do that.

There are other points of view as well. But, the point is that your point of view has to be distinct. The companies that copy others tactics pretty much tell you that they stand for nothing more than the same.

That’s why it is imperative to develop your own point of view of what social media means to your company.

Only then will you develop a capability.

What do you stand for?

Related articles

• Booz & Company: Social Media on CEO’s Agenda (ggbenitezpr.com)

For Social Media Success, put strategy before tactics is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Source: Social Workplace

Infographic – Social Business Imperative: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Branding today totally depends on your activity on Twitter & Facebook on.mash.to/tbOWn6 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

— Wim Rampen (@wimrampen) December 18, 2011

My sentiment exactly.

Infographics that show all kinds of statistics are a very influential form of expressing ideas. The problem is, for the most part, they express a general point of view. And the people who like the simplicity of infographics, will generally believe them to be true.

The same can be said of reputation management services like Klout that supposedly measure how influential you are on social media.

I say Bah! Humbug to both!

Branding is not social media

Branding is everything else you do besides posting updates on your Twitter and Fan page.  It’s your actions, your message, your look, your tone. Social media tools can indeed help you develop and strengthen your brand, but they are far from the only branding opportunity you have.

Sure, there are people like Gary Vaynerchuck and Chris Brogan, to name a few internet celebrities, that built their brand through social media channels. But they’ve eventually extended to the offline world.

Technology is just the enabler.

Do you honestly believe that if they were influential, Klout would now lower their overall Klout score because they didn’t use their social media accounts for a few days?

Influence, your brand power is not measured by your Klout score, it’s measured by your share of synapse. Meaning, how many people have you on top of mind. Social media can help you achieve that but it’s not the only way.

Related articles

• 21 Captivating Social Media Stats: How People Interact With Brands [INFOGRAPHIC] (hubspot.com)
• How Branding Works In The Social Media Age (viralblog.com)
• Facebook Brands Are Ignoring 50% Of Consumers’ Posts (marketaire.com)
• Brands Ignore Nearly 50% Of Consumers’ Facebook Posts [Infographic] (readwriteweb.com)
• 5 Killer Facebook Marketing Infographics (jeffbullas.com)
• 5 Noteworthy Examples of Corporate Social Media Policies (hubspot.com)

Branding doesn’t depend on your activity on Twitter & Facebook is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Created by Voltier Digital for ScottMonty.com

Infographic: 5 companies that do social media right is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Here’s a video infographic by Dutch company, Video Infographs,  presenting the latest data in The World of Social Media 2011.

Credit: Viralblog

Video infographic: The World of Social Media 2011 is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Stage marketing experiences. Experiences people want to be a part of. Experiences that are unique and touch people’s lives. That’s the message behind the book The Experience Economy.

You have to remember that their landmark book was released almost 13 years ago. And it’s still relevant today. I’ll go as far and say that it’s more relevant today simply because experiences now extend online. When the marketing is embedded into the customer experience, it doesn’t even look like marketing.

With that said,  I thought it would be great to revisit the main ideas of the book in the video above.

Great customer experiences don’t look like marketing is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency