Overview

Volkswagen has been standing out in peoples mind when it comes to their innovative and often striking marketing campaigns both offline and online. Their marketing activity in India where they have grown very quickly into one of the most desired car brands has covered everything from The VW Polo Cup racing series to newspaper advertisements that had people drop their coffee and jump back. Remember when you opened the newspaper and it started talking about the VW Vento? From talking newspapers to some of the funniest viral videos, Volkswagen is one to watch when it comes to creative marketing ideas.

With the new launch of the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta, the VW brand has set the social media grapevine buzzing with another engaging and fun social media outreach campaign which has everyone on the social web talking about the new Jetta.

Challenge

The Indian car market has been very active with new launches with several manufacturers and and equal number of hot new launches taking place in the last three months with every model vying for attention both from the consumers and media. Car sales is a very aspirational space and the more people talk about a car, the more you want it! So just how did Volkswagen India get people online to talk to talk about the all new Jetta and capture attention?

Strategy – What Volkswagen Did

They launched the Anything4Jetta campaign and got people to talk about what they would be willing to do to get their hands on the all new VW Jetta! The online campaign is centered around a micro-site http://www.anything4jetta.com/ which is primarily Twitter centric…or in other words, you can login directly with your Twitter account.

Simplicity is key and the anything4jetta.com website gets straight to the point on the home page. As a visitor that would like a chance to win the new Jetta, all you have to do is Tweet what you would do for the new Jetta along with the hash tag #anything4jetta and your witty tweet may qualify you for a range of monthly prizes and eventually the grand prize of a brand new Jetta.

So that would get users thinking up smart tweets and tweeting but there is more. A clever point system explained here within the site would point out you get points for following @volkswagenindia, SMS tweets, voice tweets, uploading photos, uploading crazy videos of what you’re willing to do, retweets and other activity. THAT is what makes this a complete social media experience exploiting all channels to create buzz around the Jetta and the incentive… points (and the grand prize of possibly winning a car of course).

As a result Twitter is buzzing with chatter over the new Jetta, videos are being added, photos shared and ….they have out attention.

(The Anything4Jetta Online Campaign & Contest – Click Here To Visit)

(The Facebook Component – Click Here To Visit)

(The YouTube Component)

What’s Cool About This Campaign?

- It gets you to talk about the car by offering you a chance to win something you desire (the car) which instantly makes you an online ambassador for the product and has you saying good things about it

- It get’s users to do a lot of the creative work and come up with fun, catchy tweets that could draw further attention

- Very low entry barrier to get started with the campaign and competition. All you need is a Twitter account and add a hash tag to your tweet and you are in the running

- Great incentive system to drive more social activity like sharing videos, photos, voice recordings through the point system

- A smart system of having monthly prizes and a leader board to keep users involved and keep talking about the product till the winner of the grand prize is announced

- Doesn’t directly advertise the product since the campaign itself is fun and about coming up with crazy things you would do to win a Jetta. Yet the product is well placed everywhere, showcased on the anything4jetta.com site

- Integrates Facebook, Twitter well

To sum up, the Anything4Jetta campaign is just a very fun and engaging campaign which still gets people buzzing about the car. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Content and social media marketing is serious work! Execution is what lies at the very core of a successful online marketing initiative and while most SEO and online marketing tools will tell you what to do in order to get your Google ranking up and drive more  inbound traffic, how to create more online buzz, we actually focus on executing on what should be done.

At BuzzFactory, as we move ahead into our second year with more clients on board, more content to develop, more sites to manage and more online buzz to create there’s just so much going on at any given time we decided it was time for us to spruce up our online workplace. We needed a place which incorporates our core processes and ensured they remain as efficient and transparent as possible so that execution on every account remains as strong as ever.

After all, it’s the execution of our customer social media and content marketing strategies that we focus on.  The result…. was a new back end Virtual Office dubbed The Factory!

The Factory offers the perfect online work environment for everyone here at BuzzFactory while strengthening the workflow and processes which are so critical to what we do here.  For now, The Factory is open only to employees and functions as an intranet software for internal use but we do plan to roll out a future version which will include customers so they can monitor projects, get live updates and interact with the team in real-time.

Here is a small sneak peak into the back end software “The Factory” in the form of screen shots:

The screen from which freshly published content gets submitted to the next stage where it gets broadcast and gets promoted through social bookmarking sites, social networks, communities and more. (Please don’t mind the pink mist…it’s a bid to maintain some confidentiality)

A glimpse of one of the internal sections of “The Factory” which doubles as our online office or workplace. This one is a screen of the Projects section where individual accounts are managed, to-do lists are created, tasks are tracked and files are uploaded to streamline execution. (Please excuse the pink mist…again…it’s a necessary evil)

We’re pretty stoked about the new platform. We see it as the right kind of software platform to give an already strong team and strong process an additional boost and help scale without making a dent to efficiency.

In an early stage business the situation is very different. There isn’t a steady base of customers you can already rely on and the challenge isn’t really growing it, the challenge is to create that customer base. Social media marketing or online marketing is really about engaging people through conversation, content and building a brand through which audiences will start recognizing you through and eventually, approaching you. It’s inbound and pull based but it’s not instant and needs time to develop. Time is something in short supply in the early stages and closing customers is a priority. This should mean…. focusing completely on sales will help you go after targeted set of prospects and close customers slow and steady to build the revenue stream. However, there is a conflict in this strategy.

Given a hypothetical situation where you employee a 3 person sales team using email and telephone campaigns to pursue and close new customers, the progress over a few months is likely to appear like the blue line above. There will be a more or less steady line with some good months, some bad ones but the only way to increase sales in future is to increase the size of the sales team and invest more into sales. Great way to start business development but no long term benefits for growth.

It’s like hunting for your food. The more you need, the more hunters you need and it’s not a sustainable strategy.

Given the same situation where you employ a team of 3 for social media marketing and outreach, you are likely to see something similar to the red line. You may not see much progress over the first few months but as the ecosystem of content and buzz around your business grows, you’ll find an increasing flow of prospects towards your site which with time can be closed as customers. The process starts slow but consistently grows with the same amount of work put in every month. This means, though in the short run it may seem slow, in the long run you can grow your customer base without increasing your investment in the process. Not a great start but great future benefits perfect for high growth.

It’s like farming for your food. You cultivate a customer base by sowing content. It’s highly sustainable in the long run. As the content and buzz around your business increases each month, so does your business development.

Ideally you need both. Some amount of direct sales to kick start the customer base since you can’t completely rely on social media marketing to reap immediate results. At the same time, you need to start your social media and content marketing campaigns as early as possible so that in the later stages you don’t find yourself in a situation where your business development growth has just flat-lined because you were not thinking long term.

Our advice is start cultivating your social content farm as early as you possibly can. It’s sustainable, will grow and provide you more in time through a steady process than the hunting strategy which is effective but will make you work just as hard for every customer you intend to close and eventually, won’t work towards scaling your business. Hope that helps!

PR, especially in the online context has changed considerably. What was associated with special PR firms who create a very long term plan for cash rich businesses or individuals who had large budgets to spend over time with these firms is now….well… a lot like what we do everyday. The difference is  it need not be expensive or only for those who can afford it nor does it have to be a slow long carefully crafted image building exercise executed slowly through the press or traditional channels. It’s now a more nimble process of creating conversations over the web through easily accessible channels like blogs, social networking, free PR distribution sites, Twitter, online communities and more. You can be a global banking corporation, a rock band, a t-shirt printing business or an individual working on a web application and you can still access the same tools and practices to reach out to online audiences and create your own PR engine.

The changing face of PR as we witness it today is characterized by:

Web conversations: speaking out loud about what you’re doing, what you represent and sharing your brand or message with the millions that are connected to each other via social networks, blogs and other tools. It’s no longer about publishing “one-way” press releases or publicity pieces with a formal declaration on behalf of the business or individual once in a blue moon. It’s about being upfront and sharing your thoughts and updating audiences online through a two-way dialog.

Speed & Spontaneity: Have something on your mind? Tweet about it. Have an important deal or event which you’d like to share? Draft a quick press release and submit it to the several free press release sites out there. Need a quicker way to share it? Do a blog post and get it published and shared instantly! The long turnaround times for acting on a message that needs to go out are no longer there. What happens today can be published today and shared right away.

Low / No Costs – Accessible To All: The playing field has been leveled and the tools that really matter when it comes to building a presence or brand on the the web are those accessible to the masses. From the enterprise businesses to a one man brand blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, Slideshare….it’s all at your disposal. There are startups and small businesses that have built larger followings and created more buzz online than global enterprises and they didn’t have expensive PR firms…just a determined effort to communicate frequently with others through their content.

If there is one significant change thats noteworthy about PR today is that it’s been thrown open to the masses. You can have an active PR campaign no matter what you do and who you are…in fact ….you should!

That’s right! BuzzFactory.net has just launched a “Create A Custom Social Content Marketing Package” as an alternative to the existing solutions. You can now create your own social content marketing strategy and BuzzFactory.net will make sure it gets executed on every month like clockwork.

The online visibility solutions we have been offering are carefully tailored mixes of content and social marketing  activity which we know to work towards creating an online buzz for most needs. However, we understand  not every business has the same requirements and we’ve often tweaked the solutions to develop a mix of content and promotion activities that would suit a very specific requirement.

The new “Custom Social Marketing Solutions” offering on the website allows you to take the helm and create your very own content marketing strategy by selecting from a range of content development options, promotion and social media marketing activities which would help create the buzz around your brand on the web that you are looking for. The content options include:

• Engaging blog posts
• Keyword rich articles
• Guides
• White papers
• Reports
• PDF download documents
• Press releases
• Slideshare presentations
• Email drafts

Combine this with active social bookmarking across major social sites and promotion of content across social networking sites, Twitter, Linkedin and you virtually have a customized social content marketing strategy that’s ready to be put into action. Based on this submission we’ll get back to you with a proposal and a pricing quote shortly and if it all looks good, you’ll have a team to execute your plan for you.

Have a content marketing plan you need a pricing quote for? Use the “Custom Social Content Marketing Solutions” form and get a pricing quote soon!

1. No Time: The contributors to the blog prioritized writing new content during the initial stages but as other tasks and duties catch up with them they find they can’t commit the time it takes to research, come up with ideas for posts, draft, check and publish them on a regular and consistent basis.
2. Out of Ideas: A plan was defined for the kind of topics which will be covered on the blog and after a while one finds themselves at a road block where coming up with fresh articles or posts within the defined topic scope was so difficult the writing stopped happening.
3. No Takers: The regular publishing was happening but it seemed like it was all pointless since there seemed to be no readers, no comments, no feedback. As a result motivation to continue died out and the blog froze in time.

At the end of the day, a blog where activity from your end has died out is not going to work. It needs consistent and work before the blog starts working for you. It needs fresh content, new ideas, regular updates, replies, changes in direction, promotion, distribution and more.  Once you’ve determined what’s slowing your blog down here are some quick tips on how to overcome those causes and revive it:

• If there’s no time, you have to find the time or the bandwidth to commit and make it work. Re-allocate it to someone within the company who can dedicate the time to post. Developing a successful blog takes time and patience. It’s never instant traffic magic and one needs to dedicate time over several months to keep at it and getting it to work. Alternatively, (and pardon my being so outright salesy) hire us to manage the blog for you!

• If you find yourself out of ideas, look around at other online publications within your area and look for inspiration (don’t ever copy, it just works against your objectives). Also try re-focusing your topics and content to cover a wider scope and still be engaging for your target audience. For example, a business that sells “designer light switches” for homes and offices doing a blog on “designer light switches” is bound to run out of topics soon and runs the risk of getting boring.  Re-focusing the blog to cover articles on “interior decor ideas for homes and offices” widens the scope, keeps the content interesting and reaches out to the same target audience which would be interested in the switches.

• If there are no takers and it appears no one has read your posts, you have to make it happen. Blogs don’t gather subscribers and regular readers overnight. It can take a long while. Till then, you need to promote every post, bookmark them on social sites, share them on social networks, tweet about them, link them and push it out to the first set of readers while hoping they in turn will share them with others. Push your content out to others and over time, they will come to your blog.

If your blog has been stagnated for some time now, have a closer look into what may have caused it, re-focus your blog outreach plan and revive it. If you stick to it, it will start working for you.

Prior to launching BuzzFactory in my previous work experiences I had the opportunity to work closely with a number of content sites which were designed to draw inbound search traffic around a specific B2B (in most cases) or B2C (in a few cases) industry vertical. The objective was to develop each of these sites into a valuable resource for each industry that had fresh content updates such as news, articles, blog posts and more in a single location and professionals would have a something akin to an industry publication they could quickly open and read through for good content in their space.

One set of these sites were driven by syndicated content which came through RSS feeds from various other related publications and an other set employed a very small team of writers who would contribute to the content daily in the form of one or two articles and blog posts a day. The general idea behind the site which displayed content from other publications was to have more updates and a lot more content in an automated and cost effective way. Since it was simply aggregating content from other sites, it didn’t need much time or money and would update it self several times a day building a large index of links on the site. On the other set of sites progress was much slower. Limited resources mean’t the site could only be updated when there was bandwidth for someone to spend time writing a post or a detailed article, using the right keywords, linking, publishing and finally promoting it personally through social networking and bookmarking sites. While the first set of sites had hundreds of new article links each week (though duplicated (syndicated through RSS) the second slowly and steadily grew at around one new original post or article each day.

Now as logical guessing would have it, the first set of sites should have done very well but failed quite miserably at search results in every single case. The second set of sites which depended on original content though slow to develop grew in terms of both referral traffic and gradually drew a rising percentage of search engine traffic through some very relevant keywords and phrases.

Lessons Learned

• Syndicated content on your business website is a good resource. It’s useful for those who come to your website. It’s not as effective in bringing them to your website from search engines.

• Syndicated duplicate content doesn’t do much for gaining more links in search results as that benefit really goes to the site that originally posted the content you are just re-distributing.

• Duplicate content which is not syndicated and posted directly on your site is a big no no. It’s not just damaging to your page rank and site reputation, it’s plagarism.

• Keep it original even if it means it can cost more in terms of time or money. It will pay back in the long run and give you long term returns in terms of bringing the right people to your site.

• Slow and steady wins the race. Even if you can’t update your site with new content everyday, do as much as you can and make sure it’s fresh, useful, relevant to your business or website and build your own content one step at a time. Even if you don’t see magical spikes in traffic, each original post will bring in a trickle of search traffic and you can build that trickle into a stream of search traffic gradually.

Content plays an important role in social marketing and is often to keeping the conversation and buzz going around your business.  You need to have content that you can share with the online community. The real challenge is how you generate that daily content and keep it interesting for your customers.  One great way to tackle this is starting with a very active blog. By very active, we mean one that has engaging posts, insights, reviews, articles or observations as often as possible. Useful articles and posts around your business can be very versatile and need not be restricted to the blog. Once posted, the same post or article can be Tweeted, shared on groups like Linkedin, MySpace and Facebook, posted to discussion forums or communities, converted to a down-loadable document for the website and even sent out in an email newsletter. Discussions naturally follow around these posts whether in the form of comments people leave on the blog or social sites like Mixx & Reddit, re-tweets and replies on Twitter, passed around on social networking sites and really fuel the wider online conversation around your business and help it gather momentum.

We recently developed an niche vertical based online magazine for a customer of ours to provide not just their customers but virtually the industry with fresh articles published daily with interesting content within the space. Other than the stand alone community of readers within the industry which quickly developed around the online publication the company saw this as a great opportunity to tie the blog / online magazine content to jump start their other online marketing initiatives. This included posting regularly on a large community site for the industry, posting articles and starting conversations around them on their Facebook community, Myspace and drawing more followers on Twitter. On all these groups and communities they have people who enjoy reading through, sharing and commenting on the articles which are interesting or offer some valuable insights to them. As a result, the members on all these communities have increased activity and helps the business build stronger communities and better relationships with their customers.

The common ground for all social media marketing channels and social marketing is your content. Invest in regular content and the process of having a constant conversation with your customers online will just become a whole lot easier.