Mike Troiano has a new blog and idea called “Scalable Intimacy“, which describes the potential of social media to create real, measurable value for brands. From his manifesto:

Marketing = Scale + Mediocrity

Let’s face it folks… marketing has become what HR used to be, before somebody figured out we were spending more money on people than on anything else. It’s the place where arty intellectuals can travel, interact with like-minded pretty faces over cocktails, and hide from the accountability that has transformed every other corner of the 21st century corporation. Most marketing people are mediocre. Most marketing is the sexy part of sales without the pesky accountability, and it is worthless. Harsh, perhaps, but you know it’s true.

and

Social media presents the path of Marketing back to respectability. It is the path back to responsibility for actual Sales; to being the people within a company who truly understand the who, what, where and why of current and prospective customers. It presents an opportunity for direct access to the people outside the company whom we now know control its brand, its fortune, and its fate.

Social Media = Scalable Intimacy

Social media is not about CPM. It is about investing in relationships that create more measureable economic value than they cost. It is about engaging with the individual people who collectively decide whether to buy or not buy your product, like it or dislike it, recommend it or trash it, shape it or ignore it.

The term really appeals to me: Scalable Intimacy. When I hear the term, the word “intimacy” jumps out at me. It really does a great job at describing the feeling associated with the relationships we have with other people through the tools we collectively call social media. Though I’ve never met the majority of the people I talk to using twitter or the comments on my blogs, I feel like I actually know them and have some kind of friendship.

Now, I’m just a person. But if I were a brand manager, I would definitely want to find a way to replicate this “intimacy” between my brand and the people out there. That’s where the “scalable” part comes in. How can a company create scalable intimacy? How can they keep all the warm and familiar goodness of one-to-one communication while talking to a large audience?

I have two examples of the very beginning of scalable intimacy. The first is Dell Computer. What started off as one person monitoring and engaging with customers on twitter has turned into a 28 person team of Dell employees covering every one of Dell’s product lines. Mention something about Dell on twitter, and I’d be willing to bet you’ll get a response.

The second example is Scott Monty at Ford. Scott is the head of social media at Ford, and he’s an animal. He’s all over twitter, he’s got 3 blogs, he’s podcasting, youtubing, you name it, he’s there. Got a question about Ford? He’s got an answer. Have a question you want to ask Ford’s CEO publicly? Done. He’s turned to twitter and asked if anyone had any questions for Alan Mulally. Of course, twitter users had questions about Ford’s strategy, the bailout, etc. And Mulally didn’t shy away from any question.

These are just two examples of companies trying to scale intimacy using social media tools. I’d love to hear other examples. I think the idea of scalable intimacy is still in its infancy, but this is where marketing is headed. I urge you to read the rest of Mike’s Manifesto here.

Getting your startup noticed is one of the most essential steps in building a successful online brand. You can have the coolest app/site in the world, but if no one knows about it, well, you’re out of luck. Luckily, promoting your startup isn’t the mysterious and magical process some marketers will have you think. When it comes to online promotion, there are several easy, yet time-consuming steps you can take to get noticed online.

1. Submit Your Site To Relevant Resources- This is a no-brainer, but it is absolutely essential. Find sites that cover what you do, and submit your site there. Some easy ones:
   • KillerStartups.com- Use their online form (http://www.killerstartups.com/submitted)
   • Launchfeed.com- Use this site to announce the launch of your service. Not as important on the site itself, but other sites subscribe to launchfeed and use the info on their blogs.
   • Simplespark- Another source of what’s new online
   • MOMB- (Museum of Modern Betas)- A site listing new apps
   • Go2Web20.net- A flash directory of startups that actually delivers some fairly decent traffic.
   • TechCrunch- The grandaddy of internet startup blogs. You can enter your information here: http://www.crunchbase.com/companies/new
   • CenterNetworks- Another great web 2.0 blog
   • mashable!- Awesome blog covering all that’s new on the web. Read this post before submitting your site: http://mashable.com/2008/04/10/get-your-startup-on-mashable/
   • ReadWriteWeb- http://www.readwriteweb.com/contact.php
   • Blogstring.com and MarketingStartups.com- Hey, it’s easy. Just contact me (nathan.burke@gmail.com), let me know what you do, and if your site or service is relevant, I’ll review it here.

 

2. Blog- This one is easy in theory, not so easy in practice. It should be a no-brainer by now, but so many people think of this as the last step. Rather than using a blog as an ongoing chronicle of the evolution of a startup, they think of a blog as a nice-to-have. 5 years ago that was true. Not now.I won’t get into the specific advantages of blogging, but let’s list a few: a) starting a conversation about your offering, b) adding search engine content c) creating a place for customer feedback

 

3. Comment On Other Blogs- This is one of the most crucial yet most ignored steps. It’s one thing to write your own blog. It’s another to go out and give your thoughts and appreciation to other bloggers. It builds relationships. It adds link love. It ups your google juice. It makes people think you’re an actual human being with opinions. Spend an hour a day doing this and you won’t believe the return you’ll get. I promise.

 

4. Your Logo- I cannot stress the importance of having your logo available in an easy-to-embed format. If I’m checking out a startup, I always want to include their logo in the post. If I can simply right click on your logo and paste it into my post as an image reference, I will do it in a heartbeat. And as a startup, isn’t that what you want?

 

5. Your Text- Have text available. I know how simple this sounds, but it’s not. There are so many new sites out there that are completely flash-based, and it is impossible to copy and paste text embedded in flash. I like being able to go to a site’s “About” section and paste that text into a post. But even the most eloquently worded about text is worthless if it’s all in flash. If it can’t be copied, it won’t be pasted.

 

6. Twitter- Get a twitter account for your startup immediately. Use it to create a human voice behind your brand, and use it to monitor what people are saying about your startup. If you hear positive comments, be thankful. If you hear something negative, respond and try to fix the problem.

 

7. GetSatisfaction- GetSatisfaction is basically a central place for customer service feedback for startups. It’s a great resource. Sign up for an account there and people will find you.

 

8. Go To Events- Another easy one. Go to tweetups, conferences, podcamps, etc. You’ll meet people, you’ll get to talk about your startup, and you’ll get the chance to hone your message each time you meet someone new. This one should be a post in-itself (and will be soon), so I’ll keep it short.

 

9. Create offsite resources- Create a lens at Squidoo about your startup category (not your specific startup, but the category it belongs to) and list your site as one of the players in that category. This way your lens will be seen as a resource rather than a piece of marketing collateral, yet your site will still be listed. Note: don’t be fake here. Definitely make a note of who you are, the fact that you work for a startup being listed there, etc. Be completely transparent and you’ll benefit.Additionally, you might want to have your own blog apart from your startup. Sure, you can and should talk about your startup there, but having yet another domain referencing the startup can only help your inbound links. There are so many opportunities to create offsite resources that reference your startup that I can’t list them here. This also warrants a full post.

 

10. Videos- Make videos. Make a 2 minute video that talks about what you do and put it on your site. Additionally, you should have it on vimeo, blip.tv, youtube, metacafe, and any other video sharing site you can think of.

 

Obviously there are hundreds of techniques to promote your startup online and get noticed, but if you start with these ten, you’ll be off to a great start. And of course, if you are looking for help in promoting your startup, let me know. I know a guy. He’s me.

I love startups. I write about them. I’ve worked at one, and I’m now helping startups get noticed in a crowded space. As a blogger as well as a guy on the inside, I’ve come to understand how important it can be to get coverage in blogs. In covering startups, I’ve come up with a short list of tips that can make it much easier for bloggers to cover your startup. I’m not much for list-type blog entries (not known for brevity), but here goes.

1. Logos

I cannot stress the importance of having your logo available in an easy-to-embed format. If I’m checking out a startup, I always want to include their logo in the post. If I can simply right click on your logo and paste it into my post as an image reference, I will do it in a heartbeat. And as a startup, isn’t that what you want?

There are three pervasive issues with logos IMHO:

A. Coupled Logos
A coupled logo (in my own definition) is one that does not stand alone. If your logo is part of a 920×300 navigation element at the top of your page, bloggers can’t simply paste an image reference. Though I have no problem firing up Photoshop, cropping the image, uploading it to my server, then linking to it, many bloggers won’t go through the hassle. If it takes more than two steps to add your logo to a post, many people just won’t bother.

B. Flash Logos
I’ll talk about flash more in a bit, but when it comes to making logos accessible, flash is a nightmare. Like the coupled logo problem, if your entire site is in flash, there is no way for a blogger to add your logo to their post. Instead, the blogger has to take a screenshot and crop to get the logo.

C. Unavailable Logos
I learned this one the hard way, and it should have been a no-brainer: keep your logo available. Web sites are evolving creatures. The site you have now might look completely different in a month. But when you change the look and feel of your site, don’t simply delete or overwrite your previous logo files.
Once, when I launched a new web site, I blew away all the old logo files.  What happened? All blog posts about the company that referenced the old logo had a broken image. Whoops.

2. Text

Have text available. I know how simple this sounds, but it’s not. There are so many new sites out there that are completely flash-based, and it is impossible to copy and paste text embedded in flash.
I like being able to go to a site’s “About” section and paste that text into a post. I’ll usually write a paragraph about what the startup is trying to do, then will add:

From their site:
This is the text from the site’s about section. When it’s available, I’ll paste it so you can see what the company has written in their own words. And as a company, since you’ve spent the time and energy coming up with copy and positioning, wouldn’t you like people to use this to describe you? Even if they bash you afterwards, you’ve at least got your own copy alongside the review.
But even the most eloquently worded about text is worthless if it’s all in flash. If it can’t be copied, it won’t be pasted.

3. Ajax is great, but…..

I love AJAX. Who doesn’t? But there’s one big drawback: linking. If you use AJAX, that’s fine. But don’t make it impossible for bloggers to link to your pages. For example, it’s easy to link to a company’s “About” section when the URL is http://www.company.com/about. It’s difficult when the About section is: Go to the home page and click on the left hand navigation. A submenu will populate, then click on “About”. The “About” copy will then appear at right, but there’s no URL to get there directly.

4. Blog

Having a blog is huge. It starts an interaction with live people. I’d much rather link to a startup’s blog than just linking to polished marketing text. And since blogs are frequently updated, a link to constantly evolving content is much more valuable to a company than a link to static copy.

5. Contact Info

Make your contact information easy to find. When possible, have contact information for an actual human being. If a blogger has a question, they’re much more likely to contact a person than info@somestartup.com, which may or may not actually go anywhere.

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list, and I’d love to hear any other tips. These are just some of the issues I see frequently when checking out the latest shiny new thing.

All new social networks and community-focused services face the same challenge: attracting a loyal user base. Having the latest and greatest facebook+twitter+flickr+whatever is great, but worthless without an active community of users. While there are many different ways to run a user acquisition campaign, this article will focus specifically on using a contest to attract new users. We’ll look at one example of a contest created to drive user acquisition, and we’ll examine the social media tools used to promote the campaign. Though we’ll focus on a contest, the promotional methods described here can easily be used for any user acquisition campaign.

The Contest

As one of several user acquisition campaigns, my last employer, matchmine, launched a weekly sweepstakes. A little background: the company was a media discovery network, helping partners recommend better content to their users based on the users’ media preferences. The contest was created to satisfy two goals: get users to register and send traffic to partner sites.

The Prize: The winner of each week’s sweepstakes is given the choice of either

• Two tickets to the next New England Patriots home game
• A football signed by any New England Patriots player
• A $100 New England Patriots Pro Shop gift certificate

Promotion

After launching the contest on patriots.com, we identified several promotional opportunities to maximize our visibility and conversion rate.

1. Video- We shot a video that summarizes the contest, including how to create accounts on our partner sites. The video not only gave us an opportunity to succinctly explain a complex contest, it was also a great off site marketing tactic. We hosted the video on blip.tv, which is both a destination site and a publishing tool. End users go to to blip.tv to watch video, and publishers get free hosting from blip. Having the video hosted at blip gave us both a free place to host the video and a new audience that would not have been able to see the video if it was hosted in-house.

In the video, the presenter mentions the URL of the contest, and it appears on screen. This way, no matter where the video is viewed, viewers know where to go to sign up for the weekly sweepstakes.

Here’s the video:

2. Refer-A-Friend- Whenever possible, it makes sense to let the community itself expand your user base. In the context of a social network or messaging system, it makes sense for users to want to invite their friends, as they get more out of the service when people they know are there. But in a contest, inviting friends seems counterproductive: why ask your friends to sign up when each friend registration reduces your chance of winning?

We solved that problem with additional entries. Let’s use an example here. We’ll say that Frank signed up for the contest. Wanting to have the best shot at winning, he decided to invite 5 of his friends to sign up. When all 5 signed up, Frank got an additional 5 more entries. By shifting the incentive to invite more people to sign up, we gave all users motivation to promote the contest.

A great example of a social service that does this well is thesixtyone.com, a music discovery site. The site gives users points for actions like listening and rating music, and also gives incentives to invite friends to join.

3. email- Ah yes, email. When a user signs up for the contest, we immediately send a confirmation email, telling them how they can earn additional entry in the contest. Each week, we also send an email announcing the winner and reminding users how to gain additional entries.

4. Friends and Family- Once the contest was launched, the first promotional activity was what we called a “friends and family” round. We encouraged all employees to send a message to their contacts to tell them about the contest. This served dual purposes: First, it gave us a chance to receive feedback from people we know personally. Second, it helped us identify any glitches before promoting to the masses.

5. Twitter- Once we felt comfortable with the way the program was working, we encouraged employees to mention it on twitter, using a shortened URL from bit.ly. Using the bit.ly url, we were able to measure clicks from twitter, along with metrics on retweets and other twitter users using the same link.

6. Facebook- Our company set up a facebook page and group specifically for this purpose. We linked to the contest on both, and encouraged friends of the company to sign up and spread the word.

7. Company Blog- As soon as the contest was launched, I posted on the company blog, giving details on how to win. I also included the embedded video.

8. Bloggers- Finally, given the fact that we’d instituted a refer-a-friend feature, we decided to extend referrals to bloggers. We compiled a list of bloggers focused on the New England Patriots, and sent them a note about the promotion. If they were interested in posting about the contest, we would create a special URL for the blogger. That way, any reader that signed up for the contest as a result of clicking the link in their blog post would give the blogger an additional entry.

All of these promotional techniques can be utilized in any user acquisition program. Whether you have great prizes to attract the masses, or simply have a great product in need of a user base, using these social media tools is a great first step in driving user signups.