This is a guest post by Andy Havard, who is a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a UK based Internet video production company.

Video blogs are rapidly taking over the blogging world, but many Internet users are still apprehensive about making the transition from text blogging to video blogging. A lot of text bloggers struggle with the idea of getting confident on camera, especially when it’s outside of their traditional blogging comfort zone. The following article explores how you can create confident video blogs on the Internet and enjoy the popularity that ‘vlogging’ is receiving across the web.

1. Always Know What You Are Talking About

The simplest way to appear confident on camera is to know your topic. Make sure you’ve researched your subject area well and even take time to script what you want to say in your video. If you naturally get nervous speaking publicly, then having a solid subject knowledge on the tip of your tongue will minimise the chances of you stumbling on your words. When you know what you’re talking about, you’ll look like you know what you’re talking about too. This will make your video blogs appear very confident and extremely knowledgeable.

2.  Make Sure You Know Your Target Audience

The chances of your vlog getting seen by every Internet user in the world is pretty slim. A lot of on-screen nerves actually comes from vloggers thinking there’s millions of people watching their video. Your real audience will be those interested in the topics and subjects you’re discussing on your video blog, or users familiar with your written blog. This means that you’ll easily be able to find out who the audiences in your niche are and the content they enjoy, which theoretically means you should be of the same disposition. Once you’ve understood the content your audience likes and what they engage with well, you can create your video blogs in the same vain. If you can engage with your audience you’ll make a stronger connection with them and that should in turn help you to get more and more confident on camera.

3. Get Comfortable With The ‘On-Screen’ You

One thing that makes video bloggers lose confidence in themselves is watching their videos back. The way you sound and the way you look to ‘you’ is actually a lot different to the ‘you’ that’s captured on camera. The ‘you’ that appears on camera is the real you and you need to embrace it. Learn the ways you phrase words, notice the intonation and pronunciation in your voice and make note of what you do with your face, hands and body when you talk. By understanding the habits you have when you present yourself on camera you can start to make changes to your performances and become more confident in how you’ll end up looking and sounding on video.

4.  Analyze Your Takes & Videos

Once you’ve become fluent in how you look and sound on screen you can start to make real changes to the way you present your videos. Analyse your takes and final videos, be cut-throat in what works and what doesn’t work. Make note of ideas to try out for your next take or episode and always strive to better yourself. When you start to analyse and criticize your own performances you will be able to better your video blogs every at every turn and gain more confidence as a result.

5.  Practice, Practice, Practice

There’s never a substitute for good, old fashioned practice. Try record one or two videos a day, just for your own benefit. Don’t upload them anywhere, just practice. If you practice one particular video a few times a day you’ll go from having a pretty poor video on Monday to having a fluent, confident and knowledgeable video come Sunday. This will help you to get comfortable with the whole recording process, get you to be more relaxed on camera and help you to make your video seem as confident as possible.

Summary

By following these five pointers you can start to become the confident, professional video blogger you hoped to be and make your video blogs just as popular as your established written blog.

1. Industry Publications – Since you probably already read industry publications to keep up with news and events, why not see if there are hot topics that you can cover on your blog or other social media platforms?
2. Influencer Blogs – Most industries have acknowledged and respected experts. What topics are they covered and how can you add your opinion or take?
3. Competitors – If your competitors are producing or curating content, what are they covering? Are there topics where you can add your own spin or additional insight or expertise?
4. Sales & Marketing Training Materials – What sales and marketing materials have you prepared for your own employees? Are there topics that could be of interest to customers (removing confidential information, of course)?
5. Case Studies – Have you had a situation where you learned something that might be useful to your customers? Write up a case study on the situation, what happened, and how it was resolved (bonus for providing data and insights with a good story).
6. Customer Service – What questions and concerns are customers bringing to the company? Can you help ease frustration by providing additional content or information?
7. Social Media – What topics are being discussed already on social media for your industry? Look at the conversations that competitors, industry publications, and customers are having and see how you can help.
8. Conferences & Events – Take a look at the topics that conferences and events are covering (for your industry and for your target customers). Covering an event or conference you attend is another great source of content.
9. Related Topics – Instead of only producing content about your products and services, think about related topics.  If you sell water bottles, think about the activities your customers like to do with the water bottle — exercising, hiking, playing sports, gardening, etc. Figure out what topics your customers are excited about and provide content about those topics.
10. Q & A – Solicit questions from your customers and audience — what questions do they have on the topics you are covering (or on your products)? Answer the questions as content for everyone.
11. Guest Authors – Instead of trying to come up with all the content yourself, see if there are guests who would like the opportunity to write for you (or produce a podcast or video) — it’s a win-win for everyone: you get content without having to produce it yourself, they get in front of your audience (guest authors often help promote their content too).
12. Curation – Another content source is to curate content from other sources. It can take a bit of effort to keep up with everything going on, so people often appreciate when someone else does the hard work of putting links to what’s important in one place.
13. Ask – Stuck trying to figure out what content to produce next? Ask your audience what topics they’d like covered.  If you don’t get a response online, ask people in person. Ask co-workers and colleagues as well.
14. Reviews – When people go to buy a product or service, they often like to do some research first.  Are there products or services within your industry (or within the topics your audience is interested in) that you can review as posts or videos? Similarly, how about asking others to review your products? They can serve as content and as testimonials. (Make sure to disclose any relationships you have with reviewers or organizations, as well as if you received anything for free — or were paid to do the review. Disclosure is required by the FTC).
15. Crowd Sourcing – Ask your audience to contribute content — photos, videos, stories, etc. You can even feature the best every week as a round-up post or create a contest.

What other sources of content do you use in your social media strategy?

(photo by Friar’s Balsam, on Flickr)

Broadcast vs. Participation

Radio, TV, and print (traditional media) are all broadcast mediums — one publisher distributes content out to an audience with very little interaction. Social media is a many to many medium where anyone can be a publisher and where the audience can interact with publishers. Broadcast mediums like print, tv and radio are fine for marketing via advertising because the audience puts up with ads in return for free content (tv shows, music, news, etc.). However, on social media, the audience has a voice in what is published — either by whether or not they even bother looking at it, or by voicing their opinion on the content (or organization). The social aspect means that it’s much more important to take into account your audience’s needs.

Audience Needs vs. Your Needs

Since audiences online have a voice in what is published (and whether they look at it), it becomes vitally important to understand their needs so that you can provide content that fulfills those needs.  If all you do is post promotional messages about how great your organization is, that probably doesn’t fulfill anyone’s needs except your own. People are very selfish. If your content doesn’t fulfill a need, they’ll quickly go somewhere else and never come back (which makes it impossible to market to those people).

Immediacy vs. Long Term Effects

Advertising on traditional media usually provides immediate effects (hopefully, or else you’re not likely to do it again). Participating on social media has less of a monetary investment, but a much larger time investment. If you want people to listen to you and have conversations with you on social media, then you need to be consistent about posting and engaging. The upside is that social media can help you build relationships which have much longer effects than a one-time up-surge in sales.

How does your content make your social media strategy?

(photo by Niko Herlin, on Flickr)

The Trends Dashboard allows you to view and compare the most viewed (in past 24 hours) and most shared (on Twitter and Facebook in the last 24 hours) videos by location, gender and age group. It’s also possible to highlight unique (videos unique to one upload list) and common videos (exist on more than one list).

YouTube is also curating content in daily blog posts, divided into categories. I’d love to see this expanded so that there are daily posts for each category (or some way to sort by topic or category in the dashboard). Unfortunately the last post in advertising was way back in February. To be fair, YouTube’s efforts are mostly directed at news outlets.

Have you used either YouTube Trends or the Dashboard? How?

Summary of Facebook’s Rules for Promotions & Contests

The full Promotions Guidelines can be found here, but to summarize the main points:

• Promotions on Facebook have to be done through a Facebook application, either a Canvas Page or an app on a Page Tab.
• You have to make sure it’s clear that the promotion is not connected to Facebook either way.
• You have to fully disclose who is collecting information, what information you’re collecting and how it’s going to be used.
• You cannot use any Facebook features or functionality as part of the promotion’s registration or entry processes.  For example, you can’t have people like a Page or check into a Place to have them automatically enter a promotion.
• You also can’t use liking as a voting mechanism (or checking in).
• You can’t force people to do anything on Facebook to enter your contest, so liking your Page or a post, or commenting or uploading a photo cannot be requirements of the promotion.
• You have to notify winners outside of Facebook (via email, snail mail, phone, etc.).

These are just a summary of Facebook’s promotional guidelines.  You’ll want to check out their page before every promotion you run, since you’re also responsible for keeping up with any changes they make.

(image by birgerking, on Flickr)

Do you have a content strategy for your company? How do you tailor it to different audiences, locations, devices, etc.?

Start with Intended Audience

The first step to any storytelling (or marketing) is to properly identify the audience.  Who are they? Why do they care? What benefits does your brand provide to them (try to think of 2-3)? It’s vital to think in terms of your audience and their needs if you want them to really engage with your story (and brand).

Reasons to Believe

Now that you have your intended audience and understand the benefits your products provide, you need to prove it. It’s one thing to say you have the best customer service in the industry, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to back it up (awards, testimonials, etc.). People will be more likely to believe you if you’re able to back up your claims — not only when asked, but instead, provide the information transparently. It’s even more effective if the proof comes from somewhere other than the company (customer reviews, publication awards, etc.).

Voice

How you tell your story tells a lot about your brand and your company. It may seem intuitive to always have a professional voice, but sometimes “professional” comes off as aloof and uncaring. Certainly it’s imperative to be professional in terms of how you deal with people, but there’s also something to be said for adding a more human face to your company by showing a sense of humor or being empathetic. Whatever personality makes sense for your brand, make sure your voice consistently conveys that personality in your story and in your marketing.

Main Idea

Now that you’ve identified the marketing objectives behind your story (who your customers are, what benefits you provide, why they should believe and your brand voice), it’s time to figure out the one sentence that sums up your brand story. What’s your company’s niche or competitive advantage? Why should someone buy from you? What makes you different? How did you get to where you are now? All these concepts can help you think about the sentence that sums up the main idea of your story.

Telling Your Story

With a framework of marketing objectives and your main idea, you can begin to build out more of the story line. The basis of your story will help you create marketing campaigns and promotions which are more engaging. You’ll also be able to use your story to connect with customers using social media (and perhaps have them add to your story with their own points of view).

How do you tell your brand’s story?

(photo by spisharam, on Flickr)

51% of those who answered (65) believe it’s ok to sometimes cross post and 28% believe that it is ok, for an overwhelming majority (79%).  The results may not be surprising but there certainly was some interesting opinions…

You should absolutely share your important updates across all networks, but rarely (if ever) using a blast service (like Ping). Never miss any opportunity to customize your content for the audience/tone/capabilities/format of each channel. When people auto cross post, they write for twitter (the most restrictive and short format), using abbreviations, @usernames, hashtags and short urls. Both Facebook and Linkedin allow many more characters, image thumbnails and natural urls which help clarify your message. Facebook updates with properly tagged friend names and images also pop higher in the update feed. Updating on each network always takes longer, but often yields much better results. - Charlie Wollborg, Chief Troublemaker at Curve Detroit

Depends on the content, context, timing, and situation. Automated? Never. Curated? Definitely. - Brian Ambrozy, Editor-in-Chief, Icrontic

Absolutely. You have different people on different networks and even the same people use different networks at different times. I also think for important things you need to be confident in sharing them more than once. - Terry Bean, Author & Coach, Trybean.com

The stories are only good if they reach your eyes, and the more and different types of social media they are placed on, the greater the odds people will see them. And if people see them multiple times, that’s better than the story not reaching them at all. - Joey Silvian, CEO, Virtual Interactive Agency

I don’t disagree with the assertion that you can share the same information on each site, but syncing one to the other (Twitter to LinkedIn, for example) doesn’t quite make sense to me. Then you’ve got @replies and RTs in a LinkedIn environment where they’re meaningless. I say take the extra five seconds to post them in both communities. - Erica Moss, Digital Strategist

Same content: Yes. Synched updates: No. Tailor each to the specific network. Different community and audience types. - Brandon Chesnutt, Social Media Director, Identity Marketing & Public Relations

Usually, yes. While there will be some overlap different people check different things at different times. As long as the content is relevant to the audience it makes sense to. - Chris Horner, Fine Art Photographer, Lens Artwork

I personally think that what you should do on social media depends on the needs of your customers. Every company is going to be different in that way. What works for one company may or may not work for yours.

What do you think?

(photo by visualpanic, on Flickr)

What do you do to increase engagement with your Facebook fans?

Type of Content

Because people consume (and interact) with content in different ways on different social networks (and websites and devices, etc.), understanding what type of content people want in that place is key to increasing engagement. Obviously the type of content that you can post on Twitter is limited to the number of characters in the post. But the content that people are looking for on Twitter tends to be extremely current. On Facebook, people tend to be interacting mostly with family and friends, so any content from a brand really needs to fulfill a specific need in order for people to look at it.

Timing

Timing of content is also very different for different locations online. Like I mentioned above, Twitter is very current and people only tend to consume content when they are actively looking at their content streams. This means that it is probably ok to repost important messages several times during the day in order to reachmore of your audience. On Facebook, people tend to scroll back through their homepage, so reposting there is probably a bad idea.

Location

Where people are when they’re consuming content can make a big difference in what information they want and how they will interact with it. If you’re at work, you may be scanning content because you’re bored, or because you’re looking for information related to your job. Unless it’s content related to work, you may not be comfortable with looking at a video or listening to audio. If you’re at home, you probably don’t have the same constaints. Understanding where people are consuming your content, can help you provide the right content.

Device

Many people have a smartphone or a tablet, so they may not beconsuming your content from a laptop. Some people only access social networks from sort of mobile device. So linking to a site that doesn’t work well from a non-laptop can mean people stop listening to what you’re saying. Some devices do pretty well with regular websites and some do better with a site designed specifically for mobile. Understanding what devices people are using to consume your content can help you make decisions about what you should do to support those devices.

Appropriateness

By doing some investigattion to when, where and how people are consuming your content, you can better tailor your content to their needs. This understanding will also help you set the right expectations for how your audience may interact and engage with your content.

How do you tailor your content to different types of consumption?

(photo by Bruce Tuten, on Flickr)

Finding Your Customers’ Passion

One of the best ways to interest customers online is to speak to what they’re passionate about (hint: it’s probably not your products).  For example, if you sell camping equipment, your customers probably are passionate about spending time outside, about seeing cool natural places, possibly about traveling relatively inexpensively.  Your camping equipment helps them do what they’re passionate about, but they’re probably not super excited about the latest tent (although there may be a segment of your audience that is).

Being a Resource

By not just being a self-promotional marketing machine, but instead providing information that your customers want, you can become a go-to resource online. For that camping equipment, providing information about great out-of-the-way natural escapes, or reviewing camping grounds, can be very valuable information.  Instead of creating all the content yourself, you could even just setup the platform that lets everyone contribute. Now you have the go-to place about camping online, and oh, by the way, you also have great deals on camping equipment.

Giving to Get

Being giving, before you’re trying to get something in return, provides a very positive experience for potential customers.  They don’t feel pressured to buy from you every time they interact with you, so they feel more comfortable hanging around for awhile (same holds in person!). The longer you let people get to know you, the more likely they will be to think about you when they are in a purchasing situation (or perhaps refer you to someone that is).  Word of mouth is the most powerful type of promotion!

What content do you provide that your customers want?  How did you decide what content to provide?  Is it all promotional?

(photo by Eva Blue, on Flickr)

1. Customer Needs – The #1 way to improve your business website is to have a clear understanding of your customer and potential customer needs.  Why do they visit your website? What type of information are they looking for? The reasons customers may visit your site may be different than the reasons potential customers may visit. Try to make the site usable for both.  Remember that retaining customers is much easier (and profitable) than acquiring new ones (although both certainly are important).
2. Usability – Once you understand what information and functionality your website audiences are looking for, try to make it as easy as possible for them to find the information they want and perform any actions they want to do. It may be helpful to map out all the various actions that someone may want to do on your website (from the needs above) and take a look at how many steps each takes and whether the next step is clear (good analytics can also help with this).
3. Branding – Branding is important both offline and online so that people recognize your company (which is why it’s also important to protect your logos through trademarking). Good branding on a company website makes it clear that this site is one of your official customer touchpoints. Using branding consistently across your online presence will help provide recognition when you create a profile in a new place.
4. Obvious Contact Information – If someone wants to contact you, can they easily find out how? Ideally, having a phone number (and possibly email) on every page can make it much easier for people to contact you when they want to (from any page on your site!).
5. Clear Call to Action – When someone comes to your site on a page other than your home page (or even on your home page), is it clear what step they should take next if they’re interested? If someone wants to buy from you, are you relying on them to figure out that they should fill out the form on your contact page?
6. Design – Does your website look like every other website out there? Does it look professional? Does it look like it was built in 1997? The design and look of your website say a lot about your company to visitors. In some ways a good business website is more important than a business card. And first impressions do matter online too.
7. Consistent Messaging – Is what you do obvious to a visitor? Is what makes you stand out from your competitors clear? Do you have consistent marketing across your online presences and throughout your website?
8. Search Engine Optimized – Being optimized for search engines is still important for business websites, since many of your potential customers will find you through searches (even if it’s just for your company name). While I believe that websites should be designed for people, not computers (search engines), I still think it’s important to take into account SEO best practices so that you can be found by people using search engines.
9. Searchable – Sometimes people who visit your site are interested in more information on a certain topic. Do they have a way to easily find all the content that they want on your site? Having a search feature can make it easier for visitors and increase the time people spend on your site. (Although, don’t make having a search an excuse for poor site usability.)
10. Regularly Updated – Even if you don’t redesign your site very often, there still should be new information or some sort of updates regularly. Otherwise, why would anyone visit more than once?
11. Listen & Improve – Listen to what your customers and visitors say about your website. Consider their questions and problems and figure out what you can do to improve their experience.

What else can be done to improve a business website?

(photo by arturodonate, on Flickr)

Popularity of Gaming

Gaming is massively popular. World of Warcraft, an online MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) — think D&D online, has over 12 million players (according to Wikipedia). Similarly, Farmville (on Facebook) has over 62 million active users (although that may just be people who have the application installed?). The point is: people like to play games and there are a lot of different types of games that people play.

Motivations Differ

Clearly not everyone is going to be into war games where you shoot everything that moves. Likewise, even with all it’s active users, Farmville is also not for everyone. People play games for different reasons. A person may play different types of games for different reasons or may like all of them because they have the same type of motivation. Nick Yee has broken down the motivations into 3 major types: achievement, social and immersion, each with their own sub-motivations. Some people play games to socialize and build relationships. Others play games to achieve status and power or to accumulate “things.”

Examples of Gamification

Gamification is all around us, both online and offline. Sales teams use game mechanics to entice achievement with quotas and having a “leaderboard” with a list of where everyone falls in relation to everyone else. Gamification is also used on websites like Facebook and LinkedIn to encourage people to do certain actions.  For example, on LinkedIn, when you first create an account (and even after), you see a bar that shows how much progress you’ve made towards a “complete” profile:

Seeing this bar at less than 100% can be a very strong motivator to take what actions you need in order to finish your profile.

Facebook uses game mechanics all over to entice people to like, share and comment (and otherwise interact) with content on their site.  Every post that you see on your Facebook home page shows how many likes and comments it has and posts which have more engagement show up at the top of your feed (unless you set it to show most recent instead of most popular).

These mechanics not only make it more likely that someone will want to comment or like a post that’s already been liked or commented on (because it shows up higher in their feed), it also entices content providers to write content that’s more likely to get engagement (win-win all around).

Facebook also shows how many fans pages have and how many friends that people, which are strong enticements for both to increase those numbers (even at the expense of quality).

How to Apply to Your Business

Game mechanics can be applied to just about any business.  First, you have to understand what motivates your customers and audience. You may have different segments which are motivated in different ways. Identifying these segments and their motivators will help you understand what enticements you can use to encourage participation.  These motivators can be used online on your website and in your social media, and they can also be used offline in your marketing and business processes.

Where else do you see gamification and how do you think it’s used best?

(photo by Randy Son Of Robert, on Flickr)

Mango Languages

Mango Languages, is a language learning software developer (think competitor to Rosetta Stone). Everything Mango does is about having fun, including their software (it really is fun), marketing, company culture, etc. That fun spirit really comes out in their social media engagement. While they do mix up their helpful content with some promotional material on their Facebook page, everything is presented in a light-hearted and fun manner.  Their customers, who initially were mostly libraries and government agencies, really love the product and get involved by telling as many people as they can. Mango’s Facebook page is a mixture of posts by the company, as well as questions and testimonials posted by customers. Mango does a great job of replying and answering questions in a timely manner, which means that any new visitors get the impression that what they say matters.

Spartan Chassis

Spartan Chassis designs, engineers and produces chassis, speciality vehicles and aftermarket parts for defense, emergency response and outdoor recreation/RV markets. Spartan is lucky in that their primary end-customer in the emergency response market, firefighters, are extremely passionate about their work (and fire trucks!). Spartan just recently started their Facebook page for the emergency response market and has already seen great engagement by, not only their end customers (firefighters), but also dealers and firetruck enthusiasts.

While it certainly helps to have an audience that is already participating in social media, having conversations and being responsive to that audience (and providing information they find valuable) goes a long way to creating an environment where they want to engage with your company.

How do you increase engagement with your audience?

(photo by visualpanic on Flickr CC)

Scott Klososky recently published a new book, Enterprise Social Technology: Helping Organizations Harness the Power of Social Media, Social Networking, Social Relevance (affiliate link), which is also one of the first books to be crowdsourced from start to finish (cover design, content creation and publicity). As part of his marketing efforts, he has set up a series of “bounties” in return for promoting his book.

Not just free books or “stuff”, Scott is actually offering cash in return for promoting his book to your network. Two of my favorites:

It’s also possible to get great word-of-mouth without offering a bounty — just look at Gary Vaynerchuk, who instead thanks everyone individually for their efforts. Even if you don’t have a lot of cash, offering some sort of reward or enticement (free consulting? free copies?), in return for some promotion, may help get things started.

Obviously it’s nice when people just promote your stuff by themselves, but even then, people need to know about what you’re offering. Building up a great network by doing nice things for others helps build a platform where you can turn to people when you do have something you need help with.

What are your thoughts? Would you help promote Scott’s stuff for a bounty? What about someone in your network?

(photo by pasukaru76, on Flickr)

There are pluses and minuses to this change. As a person, you may want to be more careful what pages you “like” since they’ll now be able to comment on your own profile. It may be strange to see Nike commenting on your own wall, for example. As a brand, it allows a more wider interaction throughout Facebook, but it also removes a bit of the person-to-person communication which we had before. However, the reason for brands are so a company can have (some) control over their image and reputation. If someone was communicating on a brand’s behalf on Facebook, and they leave the company, the brand would have lost all of those connections before. Now companies have more control over their own network.

What do you think about the change? Are you for it or against it and why?

(photo by Andrew Feinberg, on Flickr)

Everything is Public

Treat everything you say online as public information. Think of yourself on a stage with millions of people watching (if we’re only so lucky). While people may or may not be actively listening to you, act like they are. Even a comment on a closed community can make it out into the wild. If you treat everything online like it’s on the front page of the New York Times, you’re less likely to say something you may regret later.

In Person Online

Technology has a way of sometimes distancing us from, not only our audience, but also those we’re speaking about. If you converse online the same as you would if the people were standing in the same room, you’ll think more about how they might respond to your comments.

Expect Response

If you do say something that may be controversial, expect a response. Even if it’s just one person online, that one person may (will!) speak with many more in person. Be ready to handle the response to anything you post or say online (or offline).

Be Respectful

Don’t be a jerk. Don’t say things just to get people riled up. We all have opinions and it’s great that they differ (how boring would it be if we all agreed?), but be respectful when disagreeing with someone or stating your opinion. Even when people disagree, the tone of the conversation will be more reasonable.

Be Apologetic

Everyone makes mistakes. If you say something that is taken the wrong way, apologize (respectfully). Try to explain what you meant and learn from your mistake.

Think Before you Tweet

Just taking a few seconds to think about what you’re about to post can really save trouble later (especially if you’re representing a company or brand). That’s not to say you should never have opinions or post new ideas that others may disagree with, just be respectful and think about what you’re about to say. Don’t be a jerk.

Thoughts?

(photo by Hamed Saber, on Flickr)

Our website is visited 22 million times each year. The most popular of our four newsletters, The Weekly Stitch, has a circulation of 1.2 million, more than the circulation of all of the magazines we advertise in combined. As a result, when we announce a new product in the newsletter, people go to thousands of stores nationwide that sell Lion Brand yarns and ask for it. When we opened a one-of-a-kind retail showplace in New York City to display our products in an environment that reflected our brand, we would have loved for it to be featured in the local media, but we used our own media to promote it and the day it opened there were 50 people standing in line waiting for the door to open. – When Marketing Becomes Media, Millions Follow by Ilana Rabinowitz | Social Media Explorer

How? They provided valuable media for free. First starting with patterns and then a newsletter and it grew from there. Their philosophy is simple and one that can be altered to serve any company:

Our intention from the beginning was to be of service, to provide inspiration and education, and to support and enhance the crafting lifestyle of the people who might be interested in our products.  It was this motivation that informed all of our marketing initiatives.

If a yarn company, which may be as far away from technology as possible, can effectively use social media and produce content that’s valuable to their audience, so can you! Check out the Social Media Explorer article for more details about what The Lion Brand did for ideas on what you can do for your company.

Thoughts?

(image by hello-julie, on Flickr)