My wife Wann0apan and I had the fantastic opportunity to spend several days with Jay Levinson and his wife Jeannie while we were in Santiago Chile in April. Jay and I both spoke at the Annual Sales and Marketing conference put together by Seminarium, the leading provider of executive education in South America.

Jay Levinson has sold over 20 million books on Guerrilla Marketing making him the top selling marketing author in history.

Jay Levinson shared with audience the 19 secrets of Guerrilla Marketing. In essence a formula for effectively executing this brilliant grass-roots type marketing. Guerrilla marketers measure success based upon profit, not sales volume, web traffic or how well a name is recognized. With my experience in Social Media and sales I thought I would share with you how you can use this formula to effectively execute a Guerrilla Social Media Marketing Campaign. I have shared these tips three at a time on my blog as series. Today I’m putting them all in one place.

According to Jay if you memorize these secrets, you will exceed your most optimistic expectations in business. All of these secrets end in “ent”:

1. Commitment – Mediocre will win over brilliant. The key lesson here is stay the course. Your social media efforts, whether it is blogging, video podcasts, twitter or a combination of these tools must be executed with a one to two year commitment. Stick with it, it will pay big.

2. Investment – Guerrilla marketing is a recession proof investment. It will pay better than any traditional financial investment. The key thing is you will need to invest in Social Media. This will come not in dollars but time, energy, ability, money, reputation

3. Consistent – Don’t change your identity. Brands, relationships, trust, and technology all take time for adoption and acceptance. Be consistent with your message and on-line social media identity.

4. Confident – You must be confident and instill confidence in the customer. Use social media to listen to your customers. Jay says, “Service is anything the customer wants it to be.” Listen! He goes on to say, “Quality is what customers get out of your product. “ This is great information that can help you provide specific, on topic, brilliant solutions to your target market’s pains.

5. Patient – Be patient. Be patient with yourself, it will take you time to master the Guerrilla Marketing “Weapons of Social Media.” Be patient as you build a community online, build roots and a foundation that will be un-shakable. Be patient with your target market, they will rush in to use and engage in social media, but they will do it in their time-frame.

6. Assortment of Weapons – Use a diversity of tools. Start with a blog or highly socially enabled site. Then use and master all of the major tools. You will identify over time which ones you have a talent for using, and which ones your market responds to best. Today these tools may include:
* Blogging
* Video Podcasting (YouTube, Viddler etc.)
* FaceBook
* Linkedin
* Flickr
* Twitter
* Forums
* Ning.com
* Digg
* StumbleUpon
* FriendFeed
* Google Profiles
* Tumblr
* Ubertor (for Realtors)
* Meetup.com

7. Convenient - “Time is money is a lie. Time is life, don’t waste their time.” - Jay Levinson. This is critical, don’t make people work hard to find your information or consume the great content you create. Also don’t waste their time with 10 minute videos when you could say it in 3 minutes or even better, 3 Twitter tweets. Brevity is key in Guerrilla Social Media Marketing

8. Subsequent – Always know what’s next, don’t write an e-book, write a series of e-books. Don’t just solve one customer pain, be in search of the next big thing that can help those who are connected with you.

9. Amazement – “Tell stories because stories are not boring.” – People love stories, that’s why they follow you on Twitter, they are following the story of your personal brand at 140 characters at a time. Stories spark passion, get good at using social media to tell stories.

10. Measurement – Measure your success, use tools like Google Analytics to track the traffic and behavior of those arrive at your site as a result of your social media activities. Don’t just measure profits either. Look at happiness, education, network growth, and positive community impact these are all other forms of profit.

11. Involvement – Listen and engage, or even better give them platforms to communicate and share. Then jump into the conversation and let them know that you hear them. This could be building a Ning.com social network for people who are in your industry. It may be starting a new LinkedIn or FaceBook group. You can also use a tool like Meetup.com to get your online community to meet offline and cement relationships.

12. Dependent – “The guerrilla’s job is not to compete but to cooperate with other businesses. Market them in return for them marketing you. Set up tie-ins with others. Become dependent to market more and invest less.” Begin to blog, do interviews and profile your cooperative competitors online and many will reciprocate and help you grow your following and client base.

13. Armament – Arm yourself with all of the social media tools that your customer consumes or uses. Also find new markets through arming yourself with new social networks and mediums.

14. Consent - Permission is number one if you are going to be a Guerrilla Social Media marketer. Take time to build trust and relationships and never overstate or overstep your relationships online with pitches and unsolicited messaging.

15. Content – “Substance wins over style” Give real value, unique content and do it often with multiple social media weapons. If you want to dominate your marketplace using social media give more, and give more often. Your community and Google’s robots will reward you!

16. Augment - Augment your attack; audit yourself and your strategy constantly. The world of social media is growing by the millions of members every month. You have to stay up on the tools and on the demographics of each medium. NHL Superstar Wayne Gretzky attributes his success on the ice to always knowing where the hockey puck was going to be versus where it was in the moment. He was always ahead of the game. You need to be the same way in the social media space. Ask: “What’s next?”

17. Congruent – Make sure that all of your tools and messages work together. You should be layering each blog entry, twitter update, or FaceBook post like bricks in a building. They all are valuable but contribute to a greater masterpiece, your brand and reputation.

18. Experiment – You will have little failures before you have one big success. Constantly test and be curious about the psychology behind what motivates and engages your customers, prospects and the online communities you participate. Remember that penicillin and gun powder were both invented by accident. Have fun, be engaging and bold and most importantly observe everything.

19. Implement – The world belongs to those who are willing to implement. Put a solid marketing calendar together that includes core social media disciplines. Blog at least 3 times per week, update your Twitter status five or more times per day, spend at least 30 minutes a day pro-actively listening to your audience. Constantly devour information on how to hone your skills as a Guerrilla Social Media Marketer.

Source: ClosingBigger.net http://www.closingbigger.net/2009/07/19-guerrilla-social-media-marketing-secrets/

The Social Media Reality Check Study was completed as a partnership
project, as opposed to paid research. Full findings from the study will be
published as part of a joint webinar to be hosted by CNW Group and Leger
Marketing on April 29, 2009. For more details and to register for either the
webinar or to receive a full copy of the survey findings, please visit:
www.newswire.ca/socialmediarealitycheck.

 You should subscribe to Chris’s blog at http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

A Hundred Twitters - A Thousand

This is really where it’s at: Twitter isn’t just that site any more, it’s a communications method. Dave Winer has it right. Steve Gillmor has it right. The geeks in you already started thinking about Yammer and SocialCast and Blellow and more. I’m not talking about the tools. I’m talking about the facility, the method, the way this could move.

Think for a moment about the way we use Twitter, and the way that facility could change online interactions. Not IM. One-to-many opportunities.

Some of the twitters we should want

• Health care help
• Product purchasing help
• Hotel information
• City concierge info
• Prayers ( I think Tony Steward is close with LifeChurch.tv)
• Company logistics (private)
• Up to the minute air travel info (wisdom of crowds)
• Sporting event internal network
• Prenatal care, Postnatal care

Tiny ping networks.

What We Will Need

• A centralized identity
• A way to expose certain profiles to certain networks
• Simple bridges between “zones” or “networks.” (These train tracks have to line up.

And lots more.

What say you? What’s the world with a thousand twitters (lowercase, as Dave Winer likes it)? Does it lose everything? What if we maintain the Twitter as the commons?

(Yes, I’ve heard of Laconi.ca. This isn’t exactly that. But maybe it is. You?)

The study was unique in its approach of looking at both the consumer and
PR practitioner sides of the social media relationship; looking for gaps and
overlaps in PR practitioner perception and the consumer-reported reality.
More than 1,500 Canadian consumers were surveyed on issues ranging from
how often they use online communications tools, to how social media has
influenced their purchasing decisions. PR Practitioners were asked how they
thought consumer users would respond. In order to ensure the integrity of the
research, only those consumers and PR practitioners who engage in social media
were invited to participate.

This Canadian Social Media Reality Check illuminates some surprising and
challenging assumptions on the state of social media in 2009.
“Our goal was to combine our expertise in the fast-evolving business of
online news with Leger’s renowned communications and media research
capabilities, to shed light into important questions we have all been asking
about the use and impact of social media,” said Carolyn McGill-Davidson,
President and CEO of CNW Group. “We found the results both startling and
reassuring in almost equal measure. There is some encouraging validation in
here and a number of remarkable insights into the real state of social media
in Canada.”

<<
An overview of Social Media Reality Check key findings:
——————————————————-

Social media is growing

49% of consumer social media users and 62% of practitioners use social
media at least once a day, consumer use grew by 48% year-over-year.

Social media is influencing purchase decision making

61% of consumer social media users turn to social media when researching
purchases.

Social media is credible

31% of consumer social media users and 55% of practitioners agree that
social media is more credible than advertising. This was one of several
interesting points of divergence between the views of users and PR
professionals - a gap that will be explored in more detail when the full
results are released.

Social media for news and information is important

63% of consumer social media users use social media to keep up-to-date on
news and information; 40% are using it to engage with organizations in a
dialogue.

Social media users are still loyal to the more popular tools

Facebook is the most popular social media space for consumer social media
users (77%) followed by YouTube (65%) and MySpace (20%).

Social media has broadened its demographic

42% of consumer social media users 45 years and older are likely to use
online channels to research products, significantly more than younger
users.

Social media has untapped opportunities for PR practitioners

69% of PR practitioners feel they understand social media but could be
using it more effectively; 70% of PR practitioners do not have a tool to
monitor social media and only 29% know who their organization’s key
online influencers are.
>>

“Leger Marketing is thrilled to have partnered with CNW Group on this
research,” said Dave Scholz, Vice-President and General Manager of Leger’s
Toronto office. “It’s rare to have an opportunity to look at two sides of the
communications or transactional relationship,” added Scholz. “It allows us to
go beyond the ‘how much’ or how good’ and get into the ‘with what effect’. The
study paints an encouraging picture: social media use is high and rising, it’s
credible, it’s influencing purchase decisions. Great news for practitioners
who say they see the value in social media, despite the fact that most aren’t
yet working with objectives, monitoring or measurement.”

The Social Media Reality Check Study was completed as a partnership
project, as opposed to paid research. Full findings from the study will be
published as part of a joint webinar to be hosted by CNW Group and Leger
Marketing on April 29, 2009. For more details and to register for either the
webinar or to receive a full copy of the survey findings, please visit:
www.newswire.ca/socialmediarealitycheck.

To join the ongoing conversation on the Social Media Reality Check prior
to full release of the results, see the related post on the mesh conference
blog - http://www.meshconference.com/blog/.

This survey was conducted among 1,516 users of social media and 615
practitioners. With a sample of this size, results of the user study can be
considered accurate to within +/-2.5% and results of the practitioners can be
considered accurate to within +/-4.0 %, 19 times out of 20.

<<
About CNW Group:
—————-
>>
CNW Group is a global leader in news and information distribution
services for professional communicators. Established in 1960, CNW Group
provides electronic news distribution, social media releases, targeting,
monitoring, translation, Webcast and disclosure services to corporate,
government, associations, labour, non-profit and other customers worldwide.
CNW Group helps Canadian and international organizations to connect with local
and global audiences including the news media, the investment community,
online audiences and the general public. www.newswire.ca 1.877.CNW.7890

<<
About Leger Marketing
———————
>>
Leger Marketing is the largest Canadian-owned research firm, specializing
in communications research. Established in 1986, Leger Marketing provides
accurate data and insights with quality service to clients across Canada, the
US and the world. In partnership with Leger’s academic advisors, business
advisory boards, and global partners, Leger Marketing brings recognized
expertise and knowledge to leading communications firms and corporate clients.
Learn more at: http://legermarketing.com/.

Social networking among US broadband users has grown an impressive 93% since 2006, and has increased the amount of time people spend communicating online 18%, to 32% of total online time, according to a new report from Netpop Research, LLC that delves into social networking trends and habits.

The “Netpop | Connect: Social Networkers US” report also reveals that at the same time as online communications has increased, the time spent on traditional forms of online entertainment has declined 29%, and is now down to 19% of total online time:

This, Netpop said, is changing the face of how entertainment is defined, and giving rise to a new form of leisure built around talking, sharing, and providing opinions and perspectives.

Social Media Use

The research estimates that 105 million American broadband users (76%) now contribute to social media:

Moreover, though many types of social media are used by less than 10% of broadband users, seven million users are “heavy” social media contributors, who do at least six activities - such as blogging, microblogging, social networking and photo/video sharing - and connect with 248 people on a one-to-many basis in a typical week. This small but powerful proportion of social media contributors are fueling Web 2.0 activity, Netpop said.

Additional research findings:

Email is the most popular mode of communication, designed for one-to-one interactions.
Instant messaging, texting and social networking are dramatically higher among teens than in the overall broadband population.

Photos are the most common type of information shared online, while podcasts are the least common.
Blogs are more likely to be shared with co-workers and the public than other forms of shared content.
Heavy contributors are likely to be younger and are just as likely to be women as men; they are more likely to contribute content that reflects their interests and opinions.
54% of micro-bloggers post or “tweet” daily and 72% of micro-bloggers under age 18 post or “tweet” daily
These findings have many implications for marketers and others with a stake in the social media world, the report said. Among them:

Websites need to give more space to user-generated content to enhance content and connect directly with users or users will create their own venues that are harder for companies to track and participate with effectively. Gartner recently released research to support this idea, suggeting that online newspapers, in particular, should employ more social media content.
Marketing, customer service and consumer intelligence departments need to converge to understand and address the impact of social media
New ways of engaging consumers must be developed that enable companies to listen to and promote their brands through information sharing based on mutual respect and transparent communication.
The report contains additional data about the use and frequency of 20 online communication and social media channels, age differences in use and frequency of social media users, information about public vs. private sharing of Web 2.0 comments and content, and profiles of six Web 2.0 brands: Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp and YouTube, to identify the types of users and unique motivations that drive usage of these sites
Chinese Social Media Use Surpasses US

Related research from Netpop also examines the social networking environment in China and finds that 92% of the 243 million broadband consumers in that country (224 million) ages 13+ contribute to social media. This is compared with only 76% of the American broadband population.

Additional findings about Chinese users:

China has a sizable proportion of social media contributors who participate in many Web 2.0 activities, including blogs, micro-blogs, social media, video and photo sharing
43% of Chinese broadband users (105 million) contribute to forums and discussion boards.
Young professionals ages 25-29 are the most active users of social media in China. They use more online modes of communication more often than any other age group.
37 percent of bloggers, or 29 million bloggers, post to blogs on a daily basis.
41 million Chinese are heavy social media contributors (6+ activities) who connect with 84 people on a ‘one-to-many’ basis in a typical week.
For Chinese Netizens, Netpop said, social media add exponentially to the sources and perspectives available online and represent a new experience for a country accustomed to a single source for media and information.
About the US survey: The report on US broadband users is based on an online survey of 4,384 broadband users ages 13+ and was conducted in September and October 2008. Respondents were selected from research panels using Netpop’s MarketMirror sampling methodology to ensure that participants are representative of the internet population in the target country based on age and gender.

Related topics: Research, Online Networks, Signs of What’s to Come, Youth, Online, Measurement/Analytics, Entertainment, Behavioral Marketing, Asia Pacific, Blogs, Demographics, Email, Interactive

Sources: “Netpop | Connect: Social Networkers US”
Marketing Charts:
http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/social-networking-grows-93-communication-becomes-entertainment-8576/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink

While I’m looking forward to learning about the secretes behind some of our best sponsorships, I think what I’m most looking forward to is the actual awards.  I know that no one goes into to this business for the fame, but we all need to see the best examples of sponsorship, hear the stories of what has captured the imagination of audiences, and succeeded to meet the goals and objectives of marketers.

More than ever marketers and advertisers need to capture the hearts and minds of consumers.  Sponsorship provides them with the essential contact and interactivity that will help them.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Are there any alternate solutions for amateur sports in Canada or is this part of our culture - we have historically some of the most underfunded athletes in the world.  Will we only care when we host an international event?  What happens after 2010 - is there a strong enough legacy to support our athletes?

Annual Conference & Sponsorship Marketing Awards

Monday, April 6, 2009
Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

When times are tough, the tough get going with their most effective sponsorship marketing programs ever. Be inspired to conquer the challenges ahead at the 2009 SMCC Conference and Sponsorship Marketing Awards.

Learn winning tactics and strategies to make your programs the best they can be from these keynote speakers:

• John Doig, Senior VP, Canadian Marketing, Scotiabank
• Richard Peddie, President & CEO, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment
• Eric Spath, Manager of Speakers & Events, World Vision Canada
• Laurel Walzak, Director, Integrated Sales & Marketing, National Hockey League

Put into action the best sponsorship marketing intelligence from:

• Andrew Grenville, Chief Research Officer, and Anu Bhalla, Senior VP, Business Development, Angus Reid Strategies on sponsors who are winning big with consumers
• Dr. Alan Middleton, Executive Director, York University’s Schulich Executive Education Centre, on the mega trends that will affect your business in the year ahead
• Simon Cazelais, Account Executive, Fusion Alliance Marketing / Cossette, on best practices in performance measurement in event sponsorship

End your conference day with a bang with the presentation of the 5th Annual Sponsorship Marketing Awards, a celebration of our industry’s most effective work.

Registration Fees:
SMCC & ACA Members: $450 + GST
Group Rate – 2 or more tickets: $400 each + GST

Non-members: $695 + GST
Group Rate – 2 or more tickets: $645 each + GST

To Register please visit the SMCC site http://www.sponsorshipmarketing.ca/events/calendar.asp

Is there a new maret opportunity to feature celebrities down on their luck to the commom person.  are they more endearing to us because of their failure?  Could we create a new category of celebrity endorsements - people who have it much worse than you?

As always, in times of trouble, opportunities emerge.