Captivating and Engaging your Customers with Transmedia Storytelling

Everyone loves a good story. Stories that make you laugh, make you cry, or even cry from laughing too hard. Stories that make you question your current ways, support different ideas, or learn new things. Stories that teach, intrigue, or provide. 

Stories play such a large part in our everyday lives. They have the ability to include people of all ages, interests, and locations. By telling a story, not only is an experience established, but also a community is created. As consumers, we act the same way. We want to feel a connection to the brands we use and the companies we trust. These businesses have the opportunity to solidify that bond by creating a story of their own – a story that we can be a part of.

Long Winter... Heat Up Your Social Marketing with Email

Yesterday, the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, sent tweets predicting a longer winter and updated his Facebook status. Even our furry-friend Phil is an effective marketer in 2010! However, as the marketing world becomes more social, we shouldn't forget about those communication channels that still work effectively – email marketing for example. Do you intend on going social in 2010? Don't forget about the power of email marketing. Email marketing is still a solid, cost-effective method to communicate with your customers and prospects. In fact, marketers are sharpening their email marketing skills in order to enhance and bring about even better responses to their campaigns.

What can you do in 2010 to enhance the power of your email marketing program? Here are a few tips:

Let's Get Social

What's so great about being social? There are many reasons you need to get on board, not only Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Other niche interest groups are creating their own expanding social networks, Ning for example. With so much scattered interest, where do you begin to start?

First, make sure your resources are served wisely by going into this arena. Don't sacrifice other marketing efforts that are making money efficiently for you. Divide and conquer with your staff and begin slowly by making a plan and sticking to it as appropriate.

Twitter updates can are especially effective for retailers. Alert your customers to special sales and new item arrivals. Invite them to a special customer event. Let them know that subscribing to your tweets will pay.

How about your fans? Facebook interactions allow for robust consumer interactions, where you can interact and respond directly to consumers. It can be more than games and ads. Consumers are looking for reviews and feedback. Urge your current customers to interact with you and provide feedback for new prospects. Do you leverage the use of page tabs on Facebook? You may want to look into a fan page management system with fan page templates such as Social Bravo.

Use Social Media to Measure the Impact of Your Email Campaigns

After reviewing the results of numerous surveys studying the affects of social media, one consistent finding comes up time after time. Companies that are heavily invested in social media are surpassing their peers in terms of both revenue and performance. The biggest challenge for marketers is proving to senior management that social media is driving these results. When trying to determine the value of social media efforts, marketers should focus on the following metrics:

• 1. Know the number of contacts. When email prompt subscribers to share the message, you won’t get the forwarded email address, but you will be able to glean how many contacts in total there are in their networks.
• 2. Track the number of invitations shared. Identify the number of invitations sent by your subscribers in order to track social engagement in a scalable way.
• 3. Track the number of invitations accepted. Subscribers most likely have large social networks and will send significant amounts of invitations regarding your company’s products and services.
• 4. Track conversions by your subscribers. Knowing this information will help marketers segment their lists by level of influence, which is essential for developing a results-driven subscriber list.

Marketing Opportunities Expand on Facebook with PayPal

Marketers looking for opportunities to sell their products on Facebook now can use PayPal to pay for the ads. PayPal is an online payment service owned by eBay.

Advertisers can target people based on things such as location, age or interests, which makes ads more relevant to the more than 400 million Facebook users worldwide,” a Facebook spokeswoman says. “People can also engage with Facebook Ads as they would with other things on the site. For example, you can RSVP to an event or become a fan of a page through an ad.”

Offering PayPal will especially help business in areas where payment processing can be difficult or expensive, Facebook says. This would especially apply to smaller firms based outside the United States, Facebook says.

The social networking site also will offer PayPal as a payment option for Facebook Credits, through which consumers buy virtual goods, such as components of online games. “People can use Facebook Credits to purchase virtual goods within a small number of games and applications on Facebook platform, as well as virtual gifts sold in Facebook's gift shop,” the spokeswoman says.