CJU Course: Joel Comm – Top 11 Social Media Mistakes
There’s a basic misunderstanding about “advanced social media”. It really doesn’t exist. Social media is just basic human interaction and common sense. However, there is such a thing as a social media fail, and mistakes one can make when entering into the world of social media from a professional standpoint. Joel Comm, best selling author and CJ Performer (@JoelComm), came to CJU on September 22, 2010 to impart to us the top 11 social media mistakes.
To be completely honest, this was nothing new to me. However, Joel is a good presenter and it was very entertaining and still worth my time to attend and take copious notes to pass on to you!
Bullet Point Review!
- Mistake #1: Believing the world of social media isn’t real life.
- State your opinion.
- Be polite.
- Don’t libel.
- Avoid flame wars.
- Mistake #2: Regarding social media as a marketing tool.
- Put your relationship with followers first.
- Train employees or interns on proper use of Twitter.
- Make it up to your fans with special offers if you make a mistake.
- Like me, know me, trust me, pay me.
- Mistake #3: Forcing audiences to follow your marketing instead of following you.
- Reward loyalty.
- Know your audience.
- Accept criticism, even if it’s over the top.
- Answer positive posts publicly.
- Mistake #4: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
- Keep control of your sites – inmates should never run the asylum!
- Guide the conversation.
- Mistake #5: Spamming sites (or asking others to do it for you).
- Don’t bribe. Don’t subterfuge.
- Pay for honest, sponsored mentions.
- Become influential legitimately.
- Mistake #6: Not being authentic.
- Write your own Tweets (remember it’s a personal thing, so your logo might not actually be the best user icon to use).
- Focus on the relationships.
- Mistake #7: Silencing critics instead of listening.
- Moderate but allow dissent.
- Make mistakes right quickly.
- Mistake #8: Not being professional.
- Be professional!
- Know your audience – this will help you to be personal, but also not too personal where you cross a line that might hurt your brand.
- Mistake #9: Loose lips sink ships.
- Watch what you say.
- Apologize quickly if you offend or cross a line.
- Engage the community.
- Mistake #10: Stopping your campaign – and your relationship.
- Build campaigns for the long term.
- Don’t cast aside engaged customers.
- Remember real people build real relationships.
- Treat your audience with respect – they know where you “live” online.
- Mistake #11: Not realizing that the world is watching.
- Engage your brain before Tweeting.
- Make it right when you make a mistake.
- Don’t become a negative example in Joel’s presentation.
CJU Course: Kerri Pollard – It’s All About Growth
Of course, at every CJU the general manager of the company has to give an encouraging “state of the company” type speech. This year it was all about growth.
- Kerri Pollard, General Manage, Commission Junction (@kerripollard)
I really enjoyed the statistics Kerri shared, despite her saying she wasn’t a numbers person. Neither am I, but these were very “feel good” numbers for current CJ publishers and advertisers.
Bullet Point Review!
- Unless you were a coupon publisher, growth was hard in 2009.
- $1.9 billion spent on affiliate marketing in 2009 – it’s estimated to be $4 billion in 2014.
- Online advertising has tripled.
- Affiliate marketing is growing faster than other advertising types.
- 28% of consumers’ time is spent online, but online advertising is typically only 13% of a company’s marketing budget.
- E-commerce sales are still only 3.8% of total retail sales.
- 62% of adults shopping online seek out a coupon before purchasing.
- Old Spice was the most viral campaign in 2010.
- Twitter is seeing 90 million tweets per day.
- 63% of online retailers that use a 3rd party advertising tracking solution, use CJ.
- Bed, Bath, & Beyond is the newest big-box retailer to come to CJ.
- CJ has seen a 40% increase in advertisers over the last 12 months.
- Publishers need to generate $10k/month in commissions for 3 straight months to qualify for CJ Performer status.
- Monthly income doubled on average after publishers become a CJP.
- There’s a new “Get Links” area, in beta right now.
- Advertisers supporting direct linking are clearer.
- There’s additional filtering options.
- Everyone at CJU now has access to the new “Get Links” area.
- CJ has seen a 24% increase in publisher relationships over the last 12 months.
- Affiliate marketing is now retailer’s first stop instead of their last stop.
- CJ feeds product helps advertisers fix data feeds and also works with 200+ comparison shopping engines.
- CJx beta takes care of finding advertisers, getting approved, finding products, and managing links for the publisher (name is temporary).
- CJ media is more short term campaigns (like an internal CPA network).
- 10 largest publishers on CJ experienced 50% year-over-year growth in Q2.
- 20 largest advertisers on CJ experienced 26% year-over-year growth in Q2.
CJU 2010: Daniel Pink Keynote
Well I returned from CJU on Friday, and I have notes! Unfortunately, my alarm clock failed me and I missed the vast majority of Daniel Pink’s keynote. I saw part, and I took some notes for you, and I’m grossly disappointed that I missed it.
Bullet Point Review!
- DIY performance review works best.
- People do better if they feel like what they do matters.
- Autonomy – Mastery – Purpose
- Sometimes we obsess over how people do stuff when they don’t focus on why.
- When you pair the profit motive & the purpose motive, great things happen.
- Have a purpose bigger than your product.
Interview with Lisa Riolo of Impact Radius
A new kind of affiliate network was launched just a couple weeks ago – Impact Radius. They boast themselves as the first multi-channel performance marketing platform. Impact Radius links performance advertising to TV, radio, print and online distribution channels—delivering to advertisers and media partners opportunities for growth and profit. I’m happy to present you with an interview with one of the founders, Lisa Riolo.
What is the Twitter (~140 Character) Definition of Impact Radius?
Well, I’m going to cheat a little and send back-to-back tweets from @impactradius
- We’re the first multi-channel performance advertising platform. Emphasis on multi-channel.
- We feature an open directory for discovering partners, electronic insertion orders, comprehensive tracking, reporting and payout processing.
Are all the founders of Impact Radius from your days at Commission Junction?
Yes, we all met there in the early days. We’ve all worked for other companies or pursued other ventures in-between then and now.
Those other experiences apart provided tremendous value because it gave us all expanded perspectives. It’s like when everyone in a band goes off and does solo projects and experiments with new rhythms and different instruments. Later, the band reunites with transformed creativity and a familiar, but fresh sound.
How do you feel this will impact the industry in the short term? Long term?
We see the convergence of traditional and online media as a huge opportunity. Almost immediately, new partnerships that bridge traditional channels to online and vice-versa started forming. Relationships like these, before Impact Radius, were challenging. This makes us a catalyst for growth for the industry as a whole.
Do you foresee any hurdles since the nomenclature of performance marketing terms usually mean different things in different aspects of marketing?
One of the greatest opportunities about building this business was the chance to start with a completely clean slate. We re-visited everything about performance advertising. We asked questions like: What is fundamental to the relationships and what could benefit from a new approach? What business processes are counter to the way people actually work together? And even—is this the best descriptor to use?
So, yes, with respect to nomenclature, we have introduced changes that should minimize confusion and help bridge the differences in a way that creates opportunity. Let me give you an example: We don’t call “affiliates” Affiliates. We don’t call “affiliates” Publishers either. We say: Media Partners—which works for Internet marketers, broadcast TV networks, print publications etc.
Who do you feel this is a sure sell to? (i.e. Who are your primary demographic?)
The performance advertising industry, meaning the advertisers, the media partners, the agencies and services, and even the networks.
I know that answer sounds like we’re flying in the face of conventional wisdom—trying to do ‘everything’ for ‘everybody.’ We’re not, though, doing everything for everybody. We are a technology platform designed specifically for performance advertising. But we’re not also an agency and also a broker and also direct response product owners. We designed Impact Radius to serve the needs of many business models, including the one’s I just listed, as they manage their performance advertising efforts.
How does this integrate with the existing affiliate technologies out there?
Technology companies and solution providers alike can promote their services in our directory and interface with our technology platform through Web Services.
What are the questions you get asked the most about Impact Radius from affiliates? From merchants? From agencies?
How do I sign-up? Seriously.
There really isn’t a strong argument against doing some level of business with us. Even if it’s just to manage a few relationships on the platform or promote your services in the directory…
How about questions from the networks?
The initial response is congratulatory and supportive. Then comes the question: Should I consider you a competitor?
Our answer is: Not necessarily. Aspects of our functionality may overlap—but aspects may also be complementary. For example, a CPA network could promote their offers in our directory and use platform features like the electronic insertion orders or payout systems to efficiently manage certain relationships. Or, an affiliate network could refer one of their customers to Impact Radius to start managing their “offline” advertising on a performance basis.
The idea is to fuel performance advertising growth exponentially.
Lisa Riolo is an active, dedicated member of the performance advertising community and remains committed to its further growth and achievement. Prior to co-founding Impact Radius, Lisa consulted with high-growth businesses to develop online marketing programs and scale operations. Lisa’s previous experience includes serving as senior vice president of business development at Commission Junction, where she played an instrumental role in growing company revenue, and managerial roles at Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Bank of America.
Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Claremont McKenna College.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 14: Eric Nagel in the House
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
Once again, our schedules just were not fated to correspond this week. So we enlisted the help of good ol’ Eric Nagel, the king of awesome business cards, to co-host with me. Watch out Mike – Eric may give you a run for your money! It was a good conversation, a bit more focused than some. And in Eric’s honor – no intro music! It’s a short & sweet episode coming in at 42:30. In in this episode we discuss:
- CJ Keyword Links expiring – how will this affect affiliates?
- Affiliate Day on Monday September 14th
- Twitter changed it’s Terms of Service, and strangely announced it via email.
- WordPress getting hacked last week and some discussion of upgrading WordPress, plugins, and WordPress MU.
- CJU, ShareASale ThinkTank, Affiliate Summit West, Affiliate Convention all on the West Coast – no love for East Coast!
- The phenomenon of Poken, custom logo Poken, and more business-like Poken coming soon.
URGENT! California AB178 is BACK!
As forewarned, the “affiliate nexus” language has been added to the state’s budget in an effort to generate more revenue for California. So, we need support again! LinkShare sent out a letter to all affiliates on behalf of the PMA, and Commission Junction sent out one of their own. In part, the PMA email read:
You may remember the grass-roots campaign we waged in April, to defeat an anti-affiliate tax bill that would have a detrimental effect on affiliate programs. Even though we defeated that bill, it has been revived, in a desperate hope to help California’s budget crisis. The bill was originally defeated thanks to the affiliate community in California, who was responsible for convincing the sponsoring committee that this bill was a bad idea. Now it is time to repeat that stellar effort, because we have a few more people to convince.
So we need your assistance again! Below is a list of important California officials that need to hear from you that this is a BAD idea! Also below is the copy you can feel free to paste into the email you send to them! Some folks are going back to Sacramento today to do what they can, and unfortunately I won’t be able to join them this time. So I sent emails. I checked these against the website and they all seem accurate even though several of mine bounced back, so I’m also including a link to their website’s contact form. Note, however, that some won’t accept correspondence from an address outside their district, which I think is complete fail of the system, but that’s just me.
- Senator Lois Wolk – Senator.Wolk@senate.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Darrell Steinberg – senator.steinberg@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Elaine Alquist – senator.alquist@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Roderick Wright – Senator.Wright@senate.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Ronald Calderon – senator.calderon@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod – senator.mcleod@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Lou Correa – senator.correa@sen.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Senator Denise Ducheny – Senator.Ducheny@senate.ca.gov – Contact Form
- Jennifer Kent (Gov. Schwarzenegger’s tax adviser; please address as “Ms. Kent”) – Jennifer.Kent@gov.ca.gov
Here is the email copy you can paste into the email. Remember to edit the parts I’ve italicized in red below. Commission Junction’s template can be found here.
Subject: OPPOSITION to Sales/Use Tax Nexus Bill (AB 178 Skinner)
Dear Senator [Insert Last Name]
I am a small business owner with a website, and I am in strong opposition to Sales/Use Tax Nexus Bill (AB 178 Skinner), which would require retailers that receive referrals from advertising on websites, such as mine, to collect sales tax in California.
I am opposed to this bill because it would substantially harm my small business by reducing a large source of revenue that I depend on to survive. This revenue results from providing advertising on my website on behalf of out-of-state retailers. [Describe briefly how your business model is set-up and what you contribute to the local economy.]
If retailers believe that doing business with me will result in their having to collect sales tax on all California sales, they likely will sever ties with my business, putting the viability of my business at risk. Such was the case in New York State where Overstock dismantled its affiliates program and hundreds of other business followed Overstock’s example. This left thousands of small and medium-sized affiliate businesses with a 50% loss of income.
Unfortunately, this bill is futile. If enacted, retailers will drop me as a partner, California won’t collect sales tax as a result – and my business will be devastated in the process.
For these reasons, I respectfully oppose this legislation.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Please be sure to spread the word to your fellow affiliates potentially affected by this bill!
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