26.Apr.2010 Bachelor Thesis – Issue 4: Self-Marketing Strategy

I identified two categories of strategies in Online Self-Marketing. They are characterized in this table:

The Content Marketing Strategy is a long-term strategy, because the Self-Marketer needs to continuously create interesting content. By that he will build reputation and establish himself as an expert in the internet. The strategy aims at target group who need to trust a person. The Self-Marketer does not necessarily need to have a own website, they can start a blog via blogger or wordpress or they use Twitter, Viemo or Youtube.  All web services, which make it possible to continuously upload content, which then is connected to the same source / profile, can be used.

The target groups I defined in my last Bachelor Thesis Issue can both be attracted by this strategy. The HR Type A, will be attracted because the web 2.0 industry uses the internet actively to find new personnel. HR Type B is attracted as well, because you can direct them to your website via your resume and by that differenciate yourself from the mass of applicants who want to work for that company. The target group can see that this person wrote a lot of articles about a topic and they can judge by the comments if these articles are well received by the internet audience. I am personally using this strategy, although I must say that I really need to improve. For example will I have to write more articles and those periodically.

So how to decide if that strategy is the right one? I think that this strategy is good if you want to establish yourself in the long run, but not if you are looking for fast results. But both strategies can be combines as well. I will get to that later.

The Guerilla Strategy is the one you can achieve those fast results with, but it is more difficult to execute. In the center of each guerilla campaign is a unique, unexpected and unconventional idea. To invent such an idea is the difficulty, e.g. could you use a facebook ad to find a job. The Guerilla Strategy often comes in the form of a Viral Marketing Strategy. When you had the unique idea you create the content which triggers people to share it with their contacts and by that it spreads like a virus. A viral marketing campaign could be an interesting video resume you upload on the internet and which is so good that it eventually reaches your target group. An unique idea was the one of Daniel Seddiqui, who set out to do 50 jobs in 50 states and got famous doing it. So besides the special idea you also need to use a tool that facilitate people to share that idea, e.g. twitter, youtube, vimeo, facebook.

The target group, which can be reached by this strategy is rather HR Type A, because they are more active in the internet, but when you do a good job and your campaign reaches the masses it’s possible that almost everybody will know about it. For example did Daniel become so famous, that he gave several interviews on national television and even German TV reported about him!

A third strategy which combines the Content Marketing Strategy with the Guerilla Strategy has the advantages of both. It can be used to build reputation on the long run and raise attention of a huge audience. The Self-Marketer simply posts articles or interesting content alongside with unique content (with high viral potential) on this website or profile. For example does James Alliban write articles on his blog and became “internet famous” with his vimeo video about his business card with augmented reality.

Until proven otherwise, I believe that every online self-marketing strategy can be classified as one of these two (three) types of strategies.

25.Mar.2010 Social Marketing Campaigns – Successful approaches

I spend some time reading and thinking about social marketing and campaigns, which try to trigger that wanted behavioural change. A lot is done within the field of guerilla marketing, which is a usually a cheap method and executed efficiently can be very effective. That is because it uses unusual means, which can raise a lot of attention.

One example is a very recent campaign against wild animals in German homes. The organisation body painted three models as snakes and put them on a couch in heavily frequented pedestrian area in Berlin. You can watch a video about this campaign on Youtube. It’s in German, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

By posting this video on Youtube they raised the level of the campaign. Now it’s viral marketing and they hope that people are interested and share the video with their friends and they share it and so on. Through that it can become an epidemic, the characteristic of viral marketing. But is the video good enough to be spread like a virus on the internet?

Successful viral marketing campaigns are the well-known example of Blair Witch Project or the viral videos sponsored by Volkswagen . The aim of one video by VW social marketing campaign was making people use the stairs instead of the escalator, which is better for their health. In the spot they introduce the Funtheory: “Fun can obviously change behaviour for the better”. When you make something more fun, you add another incentive to a certain behaviour. They did the same with another video, which wanted to make people throw their trash in a waste bin. Besides doing that for the environment, people now had fun within the process. See how they achieved it.

The communication instrument mass media is often used because of it’s obvious advantage: the possibility to reach a lot of people. Many companies rely on television, but also other media have great potential, like posters. Here one example by the Australian Childhood Foundation (this one by misereor is also quite good).

For an intellectual target group I consider PR methods as especially effective. That is because people, who were so fortunate to attend university, were trained in certain scientific approaches. So they rather believe a magazine or an organization, which are known for their good research and especially their independence. Is a product scientifically proven by a organization or does a product receive a recommendation by respected institute it will most likely convince an educated target group.

If they do not trust in institutions, they trust in people who are close to them. Science has proven, that if you want to convince somebody to change their behaviour, for example do volunteer work, they are more easily convinced through personal contacts. That’s why viral marketing works so well. In the diffusion process the innovators and early adopters are the ones who achieve that the product gets accepted by the majority. Gladwell is the one who combined diffusion and viral marketing. And formed new groups of people, the connectors (who have many connections) , the mavens (who know the trends and communicate them) and the salesmen (who have a strong persuasive power). If you identify those people (opinion leaders) and make them “love” your cause, those can become a very strong marketing tool.

Besides your close friends, who obviously have great influence on you, famous actors or singers have a certain persuasiveness as well, because a lot of people feel personally connected to them and follow their advice. For example did Leonardo DiCaprio try to use his stardom to raise attention for the environment.

During these articles I read I had a fun idea for a social – guerilla / viral – marketing campaign for driving less (save carbon dioxide). I would convince an actor, who is known for his environmental engagement and big fan crowd, to act in a short video for me. In this video he sits behind the wheel of his car. Then there would be a close up of his hand on the key in the ignition. He moves a little, but then he doesn’t start the car. Afterwards you see the actor who is still sitting there slowly starting to cry.. then more heavily and more heavily… he bangs his head on the wheel. Afterwards there would be a black screen with the slogan. In the beginning you could not give it away, not say why he cries (or she for that matter). It would be possible to make people guess why. After the secret is lifted there could be a competition for amateur-actors to re-enact the scene and the best wins a price. There are many components which can be added to the campaign. It’s actually very much fun making up those ideas….

15.Mar.2010 Do you know Social Marketing?

Recently I have been interested in Social Marketing, since I stumbled upon it on the internet. On the website I found a team from the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany describe the project they are running, which supports all efforts of industrial countries towards climate protection. But more about this later.

So I asked myself what the big difference is between common marketing and social marketing. To put it simply marketing usually tries to sell a product to a certain group of people. Social marketing tries to sell something else: a set of values. Those values are often different to the once which are rooted in society – they try to raise the bar. Otherwise why would there be a need to market them? Social marketing appears on the scene when the government, law and administration reach their limits. So it’s left to private enterprises, social lobbies or the media. That’s why social marketing is often used as an equivalent to Non-Profit-Marketing or the marketing of Non-Profit-Organisations.

Traditional marketing is directed towards a target group, but social marketing is aimed at the whole population, since the aim must be to convince as many people as possible about the desired values. But sometimes a Non-Profit-Organisation chooses a target group as a focus, because this group is in special need of the support. That’s often done when it comes to children. For example D.A.R.E. the drug abuse resistance education is focused on children and teenagers.

The methods and tools are free to choose, but since it should influence people to change their values, which are obviously not that easy to change, it must be a very powerful tool. That’s why TV commercials are frequently utilized, although those are very expensive and you may asked yourself if that’s not a waste of money when you want to feed kids in Africa. But this is a conflict in social marketing itself: to change values you need to reach as many people as possible in order to really help, but in the process of reaching many people you need to spend money and critics will scrutinize if that money is well spend.

Since there is no transaction involved (you get an ipod for small money), the person is not able to achieve an economic advantage, that’s why something else must be the perceived benefit, for example a personal or social motives. In order to know how to create a successful social marketing campaign, there is a need to know how people behave and why. So once again, just like traditional marketing, insights from social psychology are required.

Here I come back to the project of the University Kiel. This project is called Nordlicht. On the website they post articles about climate protection intervention from a social psychological point of view and call their strategy participatory social marketing. They coined this term, because they not only want to influence the person to save energy and via that protect the climate, they additionally want this person to persuade others to act the same. Like that the person should become a part of the climate protection campaign.

But how do you change individual behaviour to that extent?

Dr. Friedemann Prose, who is running this project, explains that climate protection should be perceived as a personally important problem and crucial for the common good (now and in the future). And can only be achieved through a process which comes from inside the person itself.

Unfortunately his articles and the Nordlicht website only exist in German language, but maybe that will chance soon.

05.Mar.2010 Why the absence?

I haven’t written a post or tweeted for quite a while and since I have a lot of time now I’ll first let you know why I have been absence for so long:

1. I wrote my bachelor thesis, which I handed in and already received a quite satisfactory grade for it.

2. I prepared and took my final exams, which I all passed… thanks.. thanks … he he

3. I graduated and thereafter needed to do some heavy celebrating.

That means I have my bachelor degree now and am searching for a job – worldwide. I experienced, that it is not that easy. The reasons for that are not only the still lingering economic crisis, but also my need for something truly challenging. After 3 years of studying, a lot of books, a lot of exams and projects I am very eager to put my full strength into a job. I guess that’s how almost every student feels after their graduation. Don’t you think?

Meanwhile did I apply for German unemployment benefit to finance this – hopefully short – transition phase. I can tell you, that the German governmental support system is pretty good, but also complicated. I feel like I filled out at least 50 pages of forms and I spoke to about 10 different clerks, just to get it all in order.

But this also has it’s upsides: I can help out my mum at home and spend some time with my family. I just hope that it won’t be too long before I can show my paces!

11.Jan.2010 Bachelor Thesis – Issue 3: Online Target Group

My thesis should supply students with the knowledge to differentiate themselves on the global job market. The difficulty is to get into contact with the HR department of the desired companies, that’s why I identified the HR managers as the target group of the Online Self-Marketing activities. As a next step within the Online Self-Marketing cycle the student has to make out the characteristics of their target group. HR managers of one firm use different strategies when it comes to searching personnel to the HR managers of another firm. I identified two types of HR managers when it comes to the usage of the internet:

What are the reasons for this? Ask yourself these questions and you can find out which type the human resource manager you’d like to contact belongs to!

• Are specially skilled and highly experienced experts needed?
• Does the company belong to the web 2.0 industry?
• Does the firm have high affinity to the internet and it’s services?
• Does the company have difficulties in finding suitable candidates?
• Is it rather small or unknown firm? (as a result can only generate a low number of applicants?)

If you answered most of this questions with YES  your target group consists of Type A HR managers.

BUT

• Is it a well-known company and as a result generates tons of applicants interested in a job?
• Is it a rather traditional firm with low or no affinity to the internet and it’s services?
• Does the company have a sufficient supply of applicants for posted job offers?

If you answered these questions with YES your target group consists of Type B HR managers.

Now you know your target group and can choose and appropriate marketing strategy in the next step of Online Self-Marketing. And no worries, there also will be a strategy helping you with a rather heterogeneous target group, which consists of both types of HR managers.

If you think about it, this differentiation in HR managers can be applied to customers as well.

26.Dec.2009 Bachelor Thesis – Issue 2: how to guarantee Sustainability in Online Self-Marketing

Will Twitter or Facebook win their battle for dominance and survival? How will the internet influence our life in 2010? Are you prepared for the future? These questions not only need to be asked in connection with the looming year 2010, but are required to be continuously considered, since The Web 2.0 is characterized as especially dynamic. That’s why it’s so hard to make predictions about future developments. That’s the reason why online marketing wants a system that guarantees the observation of their environment just like the management cycle.

In my thesis I developed a system like a circuit which is based on common management practices and traditional strategic marketing procedures. Within this cycle the Online Self-marketer can continually improve his online presence and by that guarantee sustainable development. I included several control methods by which it will be possible to evaluate the efforts made.

In Online Self-Marketing the most important aim is to achieve a positive online self-presentation. Every internet user should think positive of the person presented on the personal website or in the network profile. Since I wrote my thesis in the perspective of the student, the second important aim is the contact to an employee of an HR department, which is crucial for acquiring the “dream job” after graduation. The third important aim is the personal aim, which will differ from person to person. The student usually is interested in a certain industry, for example can it be an aim to become an expert for B2B Marketing in the oil business.

Around these aims flows the self-marketing cycle, all steps needed to continuously improve the online presentation. Naturally you need to start with the actual state analysis. According to traditional marketing you conduct a strategic audit observing the environment (PESTLE) and the internal situation. This includes not only the current period of recession, the personal characteristics but also the legal situation. After all this information has been gathered, they should be used to perform a SWOT analysis.

In the Target State analysis the personal 3. AIM will be identified. The product market growth matrix by Ansoff or other tools can be used. The strategic portfolio analysis is only useful when a person already has more than one source of income, for example a normal job, a consulting business and the publishing of books.

Strategies are developed in the third step, instruments get selected in the fourth and after that all taken measures have to be controlled according to their effectiveness. All this I will describe in detail in future posts. Especially important is the connection between “control” and “actual state analysis”, where the end of the cycle flows into a new beginning. Only the consideration of the past failures and mistakes can help to form a more successful Self-Marketing in the future.

06.Nov.2009 How Coca-Cola does NOT use facebook

About a week ago an article of mine about Coca-Cola’s new Social Media Marketing Campaign was posted on the German site facebookmarketing.de. This site wrote on 21st of September that Coca-Cola was amongst the 5 most popular brands on facebook (rank 3). But considering that this company supplies 400 brands to 206 countries with 1,5 Billion servings per day, the roughly 3,7 Million fans appear as a small portion of a huge potential.

With it’s campaign “Expedition 206 – happiness goes around” Coca-Cola is joining all the other large companies trying to have a share in the social media buzz. The concept is that one team consisting of 3 “happiness ambassadors” travel the 206 countries where cola is supplied to in 365 days. I heard about it through a female friend of mine, who’s boyfriend Brendan is a member of the Team WOW! now competing against two other teams for the going on this mission. All three teams promote themselves with video clips on the Expedition website to convince the Internet user to vote for them. On 30th of October Team Sha-ba-ba-do brought up the rear with 21%, Team Wow was on second place with 37% and Team The Mix was leading the field with 42%.

But how does it work exactly?

The website depicts the teams and the videos as a decision making tool for the site visitors. After they informed themselves and chose a team they click the “Vote for this team” button and a window opens. The user is asked to choose a Social Media Application from these:

• Youtube
• Twitter
• Windows Live
• Orkut
• Facebook

It would be really interesting to know, what made the Coca-Cola marketing team choose these and not others. What criteria did they consider? In my opinion Cola aims at a global advertising impact, trying to convert customers to fans and give them the opportunity to communicate amongst each other. But does Coca-Cola look at all countries on earth? Did the marketing department realize how high the complexity of it’s target group really is?

Brendan, member of Team Wow! and currently living in China, did encounter problems vote catching. Scarcly anybody uses the Social Media Applications in Qingdao, a famous vacation spot in China. If you want to reach 206 countries (and more), you should know the applications ranking high (or number one) in users in those countries. I personnally do not believe you will start using an application just to be able to vote for a team on their website.

With more than 300 Million users facebook should and does play a key role in Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 campaign. Besides casting a vote on the mission website you are able to do the same on facebook. Additionally are you requested to share that you voted on your FB wall or become a fan of Coca-Cola. But the campaign is far from being omnipresent on their facebook fan page. When a user is viewing the wall of the Cola-Page he is the tab for the campaign doesn’t show and if nobody would post anything on the wall about the campaign there won’t be any hint to it. A method of resolution would be repositioning the tab next to “info” or adding a note about the campaign to the profile picture.

Another point of criticism is that the campaign is lacking viral cross-linking. And some channels of the Internet are ignored. The videos of the teams aren’t shareable with social bookmarks. Only after I did search for the Expedition 206 on YouTube, I found their own channel, but except a link to their website in the information section of the channel there are no (click-able) links connecting those two web presences.

Aside from these details, one point is crucial: Nobody in my proximity had ever heard about Coca-Cola’s social media campaign. And if they did, it was because my friend sent a mass mail to her friends prompt them to vote for Brandon’s Team WOW!. There is still a lot left for their marketing team to do. Especially when it comes to using all of facebook’s potential: I did not see any adverts promoting the Expedition and including it in FB applications like “LivingSocial” would be another starting point.

21.Oct.2009 Bachelor Thesis – Issue 1: Self-Marketing vs. Personal Branding

Since I am writing my thesis, did I mention this once before?..he he.. I wanna let you know what the issues are I am tackling during the process.

The first one (some time ago now) was to clearly differentiate Self-marketing and Personal Branding. I started out by reading the book of Dan Schawbel about Personal Branding called “Me 2.0″, in this he gives a definition for Personal Branding:

“Personal branding describes the process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. In this way, individuals can enhance their recognition as experts in their field, establish reputation and credibility, advance their careers, and build self-confidence.” p.4

Well, that’s a lot to digest. Let’s look at the definition of Self-marketing in contrast to that (the German Wikipedia supplies one):

“Self-marketing or Ego-Marketing are called all systematic and intentional approaches of commercialization / marketing oneself. This is realized by self-critically assigning all findings of Product and Service Marketing to the own persona.”

Since contrasting these two definitions not yet helped me much with the issue of seperating Personal Branding and Self-marketing conceptually, I  went to the library again to find more definitions of these two and maybe a book contrasting them.. but besides more definitions, I couldn’t find any book assigning importance to outlining this connection in detail OR in general.

Then finally I came to the conclusion that I have to plainly simplify the whole problem. So I dropped the “Self” of Self-Marketing and the “Personal” of Personal Branding and just studied the connection of Marketing and Branding. Then it hit me! Damn.. it’s so easy and I won’t blame you if you knew it all the way.

I opened a book called Internet-Marketing by Dave et al Chaffey and looked at the schema of the marketing mix. Branding is included as one part of the elements product and communication, which makes total sense.

In one way does Self-Marketing help you line out an extensive marketing concept and on the other hand does personal branding as a part of the whole, as a special tool, help you to better differentiate yourself from the other “products” and go deeper when it comes to product definition and the communication of it’s benefits. Intensify.

I could go on deduce correlations from this, but I just wanted to give you an idea about the things I am working on. Because in my opinion it’s not only important to understand how business works and suggest effective marketing measures, it is equally important to keep the big picture in mind. Know where each measure belongs ….well, that’s just me.

12.Oct.2009 Bachelor Thesis “Online Self-Marketing” hits next stage

I mentioned once before that I am currently working on my bachelor thesis about Online Self-Marketing. After I was researching this topic for quite a while I am now beginning to write.

During this process I get assistance from the University of Applied Science Konstanz, where I am a student. And by  Jan Mittelstaedt, who offer his enthusiastic support, as the managing partner of Lorth Gessler Mittelstaed, an advertising agency supplying their customers with services from motion picture to corporate design.

This semester, besides the courses I am taking, I write this thesis focusing students, who I try to help with my work especially, but I do think my findings will also be applicable to others as well, since I am trying to describe strategies and tools for developing your personal online self-marketing plan.

26.Sep.2009 target group specific election campaigning

If you haven’t noticed yet, you will now: Germany is voting their new parliament and with it the new chancellor tomorrow. At lot has been said and except that I think everybody should vote and by that be a part of democracy or get their “complaining-licence” I won’t  say anything regarding this matter.

I just wanted to give you some insight into the election campaign of SPD, because they sure know marketing! Not that I would vote them because of it, but they selected a very nice communication tool for reaching students.

This is what I saw when I left the university’s library Friday afternoon:

election campaign by SPD in Germany

Every single bicycle had been equipped with a rain cover by the SPD (social democratic party) or more precisely the SPD together with their organization for “young socialists” . This is perfect, because it not only serves their original purpose, pursue students to vote and vote for them, moreover it’s useful. Even when you won’t vote them you might just like to use the cover, since it is free. And by using it, it will be free advertising for the SPD.

Here some more pictures:

rain cover by SPD stating: tuition fees - bullshit (somewhat like that)

little blurry (sorry): Do not forget: Go Vote on Sunday!