The old model: focus on putting out a lot of “stuff” (TV ads, direct mail, radio, etc.) and hoping enough people to see it to make a difference.

The new model: utilizing modern communications tools with a focus on engaging your audience and getting them to interact with you.

Today’s New York Times has a great story about how the GOP Presidential candidates (whether you like them or not) are using modern communications tools not only to get their message out (eyeballs), but also to engage activists to work on their behalf:

This quote from the Iowa Republican Party Chair says it all:

“There is no more powerful endorsement than the one from someone you know and trust, whether it is a Facebook post or a knock on the door from your neighbor,” said Matthew N. Strawn, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa.

If you’re using your social media efforts simply to attract eyeballs to your stuff — you’re missing the boat. Start engaging your audience to act on your behalf.

As usually happens on these types of panels, there are some who like to take the discussion toward a debate of whether or not online engagement can fully replace traditional engagement tools (TV, radio, direct mail, “on the ground” grassroots, etc.)

While I think there are some cases in which online engagement can replace some of the traditional tools (especially in small or under-funded campaigns), the fact is that the media “pie” hasn’t gotten smaller — it’s just being divided up into smaller pieces.

There are more people watching video and getting their news online, and less people getting it off the television. Television viewership itself has become more fragmented, as broadcast news has taken a dip while cable news has risen. Radio is struggling in several markets, and I’ve heard some consultants tell me it’s harder to reach voters cost-effectively through direct mail.

Let me be clear: I think broadcast media and direct mail are effective.

But … putting all your eggs in one media basket in this age of increasing media fragmentation is a mistake.

Can campaigns win solely focusing on broadcast media and/or direct mail? Yes (for now.)

They are, however, missing a huge opportunity to truly engage voters online. Perhaps by engaging them online (more cost-effectively) they can actually spend less money on the traditional tools, with greater results.

We prefer the latter, and believe this long-term relationship building is the true strength of online communications.

Anybody can press a button and blast out a message.  And there are a lot of consultants out there making a pretty penny off broadcast-model-tactics-based programs that have their clients pay for formulaic, short-term bursts of activity that do little more than blast out impressions and messages.

We choose a different path and believe in the strength of integrated, outcomes-focused campaigns that allow you to build long-term relationships with hundreds/thousands/millions of people in the areas that matter most to you.

To do this requires five steps that are fully intertwined and occurring simultaneously:

• Develop Online Messaging
• Take Message Public: Creating the Narrative
• Engaging Voters
• Creating/Identifying Advocates
• Mobilizing Activists

To simply explain how this works, I’ll share the metaphor of a restaurant owner:

• A restaurant owner opens up shop and then develops and runs ads to tell the story of his restaurant and build awareness.
• A customer becomes engaged when he or she comes in and eats at the restaurant.
• If the customer likes the food, the ambiance and the friendly wait staff, he or she will come back again and again — allowing the restaurant to identify that person as a potential “advocate” of the operation.
• The restaurant then can use a variety of tactics (maybe its Yelp or Foursquare or Facebook) to provide that person with the incentive and tools (mobilizes) to advocate for the restaurant — by spreading the word to his/her network and recommending the restaurant.

Too many consultants focus on the last step — mobilizing current advocates — without the continuous outreach and education for which we strive. It is, in fact, this continuous outreach and education that makes effective advocacy campaigns unique and powerful.  The key is not only finding those already passionate and asking them to advocate — it is reaching the undecideds and converting them into advocates.

Online tools allow you to build programs that work like an ongoing machine to constantly find interested audiences, educate them via your point of view, get believers to become advocates, and constantly generate supporters between the campaign’s launch and the end date.

Don’t just broadcast.  Don’t just deliver messages.  Start building relationships.

So, given the fact that this was the average rate — there were some ads that performed better, and some that performed more poorly.

After reading this article, I looked at the Facebook ad reports for our various clients over the past year.  Yes, some of the ads performed worse than .051% — and some performed much better.  The difference really depended on the type of client/service/product we were advertising — and the demographic or region to which we were targeting our ads.

In short, I don’t buy the premise that Facebook ads are generally a waste.  I know that when we target our ads and test graphics/interests/ad copy, we can perform much better than the average.

I also know that many Facebook advertisers out there are obviously not targeting (which is why I see liberal causes advertising on Republican profiles, and local Florida politicians advertising on Illinois profiles).

Further, while I agree that engagement (clicks, in the case of Facebook ads) is the first priority, I also believe there is inherent value in the repetition of ad impressions.

So, don’t let the headline of this new report scare you away from Facebook ads.  It will remain an integral tool in our online communications toolbelt — as it should for you.

A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project sheds some light on the issue:

75% of all American adults are active in some kind of voluntary group or organization, and internet users are more likely than others to be active: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. And social media users are even more likely to be active: 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter users are group participants.

So much for the theory (by non Internet users) that Web is full of anti-social people who shut out the outside world.

Of course, this tracks with what we wrote here in 2009 — that the Internet isn’t creating a society of introverts, but exactly the opposite.

The Web allows us to come together with like-minded people about specific interests or issue (or to debate with people who disagree on these issues).

It allows voters to join together around political candidates and policy issues.

It allows us to come together in what we have referred to as the “New Town Hall” — bringing us all together in new local communities, allowing us to connect, discuss issues and bring back the good, old-fashioned American Town Hall meeting.

We love video content, and studies show that consumers do, too.

But how can you develop ideas for unique, compelling video content on a regular basis?

Well, we provide some ideas here.

We also urge you to read Pete Savage’s great recent blog post, “Eight Ways to Create Enough Video Content to Last Eighteen Months.”

See, you had a ton of ready-to-go video content right under your nose, and you just didn’t realize it.

Now grab your video camera and get to work!

In reality, I believe that the press release has simply taken different forms.

We’ve garnered media coverage from journalists picking up 140-character (or less) Tweets.  We once launched a statewide political campaign using nothing but a video on YouTube (and garnered hits in all the major publications).

What are some of other replacements (er, alternatives) to the press release? Heather Whaling provides some good ones in her recent post, “10 Alternatives to the Press Release.”

Heather includes tweets, social media releases, Tweet chat tours, videos and, our favorite — the virtual scavenger hunt.

For those of you who continue to resist the death of the press release, we implore you:  if you’re going to continue pushing out your releases, at least start using these other tools as additions to your communications tool chest.

Good job.

But how, exactly, are you delivering these videos?  Where are you sharing them?

A new report from Brightcove and Tubemogul can provide some valuable insights on where you can get the most “bang for your post” with your online video:

• When it comes to getting people to watch online videos from media sites, Google is still the largest source of outside traffic (with more than 50% of all traffic).
• Facebook passed Yahoo in the third quarter to become the No. 2 source of traffic to online videos at media sites.
• When it comes to actual engagement in terms of minutes watched, however, viewers coming from Twitter watch longer on average than people coming from either Facebook or search.

There are additional interesting data points in the study study, so we invite you to check it out.

And, of course, we remind you to track all of your analytics to find out not only which sites are most effective — but also the types of video content that are getting the best response.  This process of evaluation should be a constant in your communications program, as it will lead you to tweak, cajole, revise and maximize your effectiveness.

Of course, that’s been true throughout history.  Any communications tool — be it Twitter, Facebook, a typewriter, a phone — is only as effective as the content being delivered.

So it should come as no surprise that the fast-growing online “coupon” company Groupon is staffing up with … writers.

That’s right, Gigaom has this great story today (we love it because it exemplifies our core philosophy):

“…while the popularity of group-powered buying accounts for a large part of the company’s growth, many supporters say that a key strength is the writing talent Groupon displays in its email offers. A piece in The Atlantic entitled “Forget Journalism School and Enroll in Groupon Academy” notes that the company has more than 100 writers, editors and fact-checkers on staff — more than a lot of medium-sized newspapers — and adds that “journalism majors should rejoice” because the company is hiring and training writers.”

I hope all the businesses, non-profits and political campaigns who are currently suffering from “shiny new object syndrome” read that article.  Groupon is focusing on content first — and growing as a result.

The content is what matters.  Start with hiring great writers.

As an update to that post, I noted that the dealer from whom we did end up buying our new Toyota Sienna sent us a nice, personalized email note.  That was good stuff.

The follow-up, however, from the Honda dealer (from whom we didn’t purchase a care) was not so good.  I originally wrote that, unlike the Toyota dealer, the Honda dealer didn’t capture any of our contact information.  I stand corrected.  They made a copy of my driver’s license when I test-drove a minivan.  So, in other words, all they have is my snail mail address.

That’s why, almost a week after we graced their showroom, we received a piece of mail in our chilly mailbox.  I don’t even know what it said, because I didn’t read it.  It looked like a bill, or a computer-generated form letter.  Further, we already purchased our car almost a week ago.

This is follow-up circa 1999.  It makes me feel like they really didn’t care whether or not we bought a car at all.

As I wrote last week, they should’ve captured our email, cell phone, Twitter, or Facebook information as soon as we walked in the door.  We certainly acted interested in the Honda minivan, and the dealer knew we were headed to the Toyota dealer to test drive the Sienna, so they could’ve hit me with an email or text while I was on my way to the Toyota dealer.  They absolutely could’ve made me think twice about buying the Toyota.

But, alas, we purchased the Toyota Sienna.  We had a pleasant experience with the Toyota dealer, and now we’re receiving form letters in the mail from Honda that makes us feel underappreciated.

Still think engaging online can’t make a difference at the cash register?  Think again.

In our humble opinion, it’s the most valuable storytelling tool out there.

The most recent comScore U.S. Online Video Rankings shows why — namely, the sheer, massive amount of Americans who are tuning in to online video.

172 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in November. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in nearly 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

That’s a lot of people.  And a lot of video.

As a company that also builds successful online video advertising campaigns for our clients, we were also pleased by this statistic:

Americans viewed more than 5.4 billion video ads in November … Video ads reached 49 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 36.8 times during the month.

Newspaper consumption is declining.  Viewership of network news is on the downswing.

But online video keeps rising.  Are you taking advantage of it?

They started out as web designers, but the members of the 37signals team have shown themselves to be excellent content producers, having authored several successful books, and maintaining a blog that garners several hundred thousand visitors per month.

To be sure, I highlighted a number of great excerpts throughout the book, but one particular quote sums up our philosophy here at Merc:

You can also see it in people who want to blog, podcast, or shoot videos for their business but get hung up on which tools to use. The content is what matters. You can spend tons on fancy equipment, but if you’ve got nothing to say … well, you’ve got nothing to say.

As we’ve posted here, here, here and here – it’s not your “Facebook strategy” or “Twitter strategy” or “Flip Cam Strategy” that matters.

Focus less on the tools.

What matters is your content, plain and simple.

My wife and I spent last Friday car-shopping — an effort that ultimately resulted in us purchasing a new Toyota Sienna minivan.

We love the van (it’s basically a computer and sound system on wheels) and had a very pleasant experience with the great team at Thomas Toyota in Joliet.

As the days passed, however, I began thinking about some simple ways the dealership and Toyota corporate could implement some basic online tactics as part of their sales and ongoing customer relationship program.

• Get All Foot Traffic ‘Hooked’. Earlier in the day, we had visited a Honda dealership, spent time with a salesperson, and even test drove a car.  They didn’t capture any of our contact information (big fail).  Toyota, however, captured my basic information (name, phone and email) as soon as we entered the building (kudos).  They should go further by capturing cell phone, Twitter and Facebook information from everyone who enters their dealership.

• Immediate Follow Up. Let me once again reiterate that the team at Thomas Toyota was very helpful and pleasant.  But imagine if I had received an email, tweet and/or Facebook message the morning after purchasing my car, asking me if I enjoyed the ride home and had any further questions?  Or, if I hadn’t purchased a car, if I had received a message later in the day highlighting great features of a car I had test-driven?

• Ongoing Follow Up. Having all of my online contact information would allow them to link me to their Facebook page, where I could learn about future specials, and even read “human interest” posts about their personnel, etc.  I could receive tweets and emails about special new features on my new car.  They could solicit testimonials from me (more below) and allow fellow customers to share tips.  And, of course, they could communicate with me to remind of of things like oil changes, or upsell me on things like satellite radio or their “SOS” communications system.

• Get Testimonials. By communicating with me on an ongoing basis, they would be able to proactively deal with my concerns or issues — and learn about if and why I am a happy customer.  Then, they could reach out to me to solicit a testimonial.  Perhaps it’s a quick, written testimonial — or maybe it’s even a video testimonial that they can share across all their communications media.  That would be gold.

• LinkedIn. They should get every member of their team on LinkedIn.  Their customer relations manager, or even salesperson, could add me as a connection a few weeks after I purchased the car.  It would be yet another way to keep an ongoing discussion with existing clients (which, hopefully, would translate to repeat sales from me and my family.)

• Monitor and Respond to my Twitter Comments.  Since I purchased the car on Friday, I tweeted about my Toyota Sienna several times.  They were positive comments.  At the very least, the Toyota corporate communications team should have been monitoring this and thanked me for my purchase.  But the local dealership could do this, too.  Again, I’m not upset that they didn’t respond — but it would be a great, simple way for Toyota to add to their customer relations program.

• Monitor Social Networks for Potential Customers. During the week before I went car-shopping, I tweeted the fact that we would be shopping for a minivan.  I even mentioned that we were focused on the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna.  There are countless people sharing the same type of information on a daily basis.  All you have to do is go to http://search.twitter.com to type in the word “minivan shopping” or “Toyota Sienna” to find out who is sharing this info.  And, local car dealers, can search by location to mine for new customers and reach out proactively.  It’s that simple.

These are just a few of the quick ideas I’ve had since purchasing my car.  They could be applied to any storefront business.  The first step is capturing the opt-in information of anyone who enters your doors (and especially those who becoming paying customers).  Then determine your content strategy to help build a relationship with those people and keep them coming back through your doors.

P.S.  Please also read our prior post to show how car dealers can use Facebook ads to more cost-effectively target new customers and increase sales.

I first started out as a traditional press flak 15 years ago — spending my days drafting press releases and calling reporters on the phone to pitch stories for my clients.

These days, I spend my time drafting 140-character tweets or advocacy emails — empowering my clients to bypass the media and communicate directly with the people.

It’s a wonderful world.

That’s why I was so pleased to read this story in The Daily Beast about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s strategy to totally bypass the mainstream media on his way to a landslide victory in last week’s elections.

This story not only provides a great case study, it also validates much of the election season counsel we provided to clients who panicked when newspaper endorsements or daily news coverage didn’t go their way.

As Governor Perry proved — the mainstream media is becoming largely irrelevant, and you simply don’t need them to win.

In fact, the Perry refused to attend editorial board interviews, and didn’t bat an eyelash when he didn’t receive their endorsements.  According to Perry’s own polls, 37 percent of voters would actually be “less likely” to support a candidate who had received these endorsements.

I love the fact that the Perry campaign rejected the “conventional wisdom” and the tired-old campaign tactics that have been (over) used for decades.  Instead …

Perry’s team eschewed editorial endorsements, debates, direct mail, and yard signs, investing instead in field operations, social media, and television.

And they won big.  In fact, as author Mark McKinnon writes, even Perry’s own pollster was surprised by the 13-point margin of victory.

I have to say, I am shocked by the number of campaign consultants and managers who refuse to adapt to the changing media landscape and cling to the old ways of campaigning.  Here in Illinois, the lack of ingenuity is alarming (on both sides of the aisle).

But, as Rick Perry showed, down in Texas they’re ahead of the curve.  And they’re winning.

The four candidates at the top of the ticket have reached almost 425,000 people via the Internet–enough to populate Illinois’ three biggest cities outside of Chicago. Kirk’s video viewers alone would constitute Illinois’ second biggest city; he and Quinn have substantial leads on their opponents in terms of Internet viewership.

It is a large market to tap into and one that professor Max Dawson of Northwestern University’s School of Communication says could revolutionize the output of campaign press.

“This new platform allows for more targeted messaging, more immediate messaging and it allows messages to be customized to an audience,” he said “Uploading is free, less costly allow candid to blanket the public with the platform and reach out to young people.”

The targeted messaging allows candidates to respond to the news of the day quickly or highlight nuances of the campaign that may not seem important enough for statewide airtime. When, for example, legendary Bears Coach and self-described conservative Mike Ditka endorsed Gov. Quinn, the campaign released the announcement on Youtube.

Still think online video can’t boost your organization or campaign?

We know that the mainstream media — and voters — are following his Tweets, and they’ve even used it to get leads to break real news stories on the evening news.

Now, it appears that some on the county board are trying to shut down this effort at open government by banning the use of Twitter by county board members.

This, of course, is a political gesture — perhaps even a personal effort aimed at Commissioner Peraica.

Either way, it’s wrong.  If County Board members don’t like what Commissioner Peraica is sharing on Twitter — then they should start their own Twitter accounts and counter his arguments.

Partisan politics is no reason to stymie open government.

Some people Tweet their innermost thoughts — or reviews of anything from TV shows and movies to coffee and laundry detergent.

But an increasing amount of people (myself included) are using Twitter as a additional (or outright replacement) source of news.

Not only does Twitter empower individuals to become citizen journalists (as we’ve seen during natural disasters and emergencies, from the Chilean earthquake to the Mumbai terrorist attacks).  It also allows people to share the news stories that matter most to them with their personal networks.

Look at it this way:  The Drudge Report breaks news from time to time, but at its heart it’s basically a news aggregator.  It collects headlines of the news that its editors think are the most important, most shocking and most, well, newsworthy.

Likewise, Twitter empowers its users to become mini-Drudge Reports — sharing the news of importance to them with their friends, family and other followers.  In theory, a Twitter user follows and is followed by people with similar interests.  As such, there is a certain level of trust — and when one user shares a news story, the others in his or her network pays attention (and, perhaps, shares the story with his or her network.)

Twitter, like blogging did before it, puts the tools of publishing in anyone’s hands. The followers gain valuable information quicker and easier than ever before. Anyone with a smartphone can be a journalist.

The stories you saw on the evening news (if, in fact, you are one of the dwindling number of Americans who actually watches the evening news) were most likely “broken” hours earlier on Twitter.

Consumers increasingly want to receive their news in “real time.”  Twitter is one of the many new tools they’re using to get it.

Well, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new study today that backs me up.

In summary, this report, Older Adults and Social Media, finds:

• Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled—from 22% to 42% over the past year.
• Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one in four (26%) users age 65 and older now use social networking sites.
• One in ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one in twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.
• Email and online news are still more appealing to older users, but social media sites attract many repeat visitors.

The important thing to realize is that email remains king with this older demographic.  Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day.

What this means is that a balanced communications program is vital to reaching older Americans — one that relies on email as a foundation, but doesn’t ignore social networking sites.

The amount of older adults on these sites has absolutely exploded during the past 12 months — and will no doubt continue to do so in the months and weeks to come.  Are you tailoring your communications plan to reach this demographic?

Just take a look at comScore’s latest online video viewership report for July:

• Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1 million viewers.
• Facebook jumped one position to capture the #3 spot with 46.6 million viewers.
• Of the 178 million U.S. Internet users who watched online video content during the month, also viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July.
• Leading the pack with 783 million ad impressions was Hulu.
• Hulu was followed closely behind by the Tremor Media Video Network at 451.8 million, and the Brightroll Video Network at 248.4 million ad impressions.
• Online video ads reached 27 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 44.5 times during the month.

Online video is single-handedly changing how we get our news, weather, favorite shows, and entertainment. The advertising potential is enormous, and the impact is bigger still.

With 89% of Internet users consuming online video, it is essential to incorporate this valuable tool in your modern communications arsenal.

Similarly, an online marketing strategy cannot be built on Twitter or Facebook alone because they — like a hammer — are just tools. Without a content strategy, those tools don’t mean much.

For many, whether a small start up or a big brand their first venture into social media is the decision to create a Facebook page. They upload the company logo, post a few office photos, and write a status update from time to time.

Most of these same companies would not undertake any other marketing on a whim, but carefully craft their campaigns to target specific markets and plan their marketing strategies to the smallest detail. No company would want their marketing activities to be based on luck alone.

Creating and managing a page in such a cavalier manner, in hopes of becoming a hit on Facebook, is as likely to be effective as say standing at the side of the freeway and yelling to rush hour traffic about your products over the drone of passing cars. No one wants to listen, and if they did, they couldn’t hear you anyway.

In creating and managing an effective social media campaign you should identify your target audience and the platforms they already use. Demographic information is available for most of the major social networks, so there is really no reason not to target your social media activities to your audience.

If you plan how your grow your online following steadily by engaging with the right people, on the right platform, with the right content, you are more likely to get predictable results. Your social media strategy must detail your marketing aims and objectives. If you don’t have a social media strategy, how will you know when you have achieved your goals?

The first step of creating an effective social media strategy is to take an inventory of your organization’s content. It’s as simple as what you produce, or could be producing, on a regular basis. Things like:

• The obvious: Company announcements, press releases, marketing materials, company information.
• Events: Any special events that either your organization is putting on or that is related to your organization, that you can “live tweet”.
• News of the day: Comment on news of the day that is relevant to your organization or your mission.
• Your experts: Who are your organization’s experts and what they have to say about your mission, recent events, or news and world events.
• Human interest: Don’t overlook content about employees weddings, birth announcements, anniversaries, and other accomplishments. Your employees stories puts a human face on your company or organization.

Once you have considered and decided upon your content the next step is to decide what platform would be most effective for your company or organization. Click here to read our previous post in which we provide specific examples of how some companies and individuals are doing just that.

As your organization looks to delve into the world of social media take a good look at your overall content strategy. Without a solid message, the medium doesn’t really matter.