Five lessons every marketer can learn from Hubspot TV

Hubspot TV airs every Friday afternoon at 4:00 pm live from the company's Cambridge, MA offices

Last Friday I made a guest appearance on Hubspot TV. The weekly show, streamed live from Hubspot’s Cambridge offices, offers a perfect example of how to market in the age of social media. It’s useful, simple, cheap and fun. And it offers a recipe that any brand or marketer could learn from if not copy outright.

The 20-minute show, hosted by Karen Rubin and Mike Volpe, and performed in front of a live studio audience of friends, employees and customers, typically addresses topical news and social media subjects. Episode 70 covered Seth Godin’s alternative approach to launching his new book, Google’s announcement of real time search, and the absurd topic (presumably serious to some) of certification for social media practitioners.

But that’s actually beside the point.  Here’s what matters.

In social media your product is your content

Hubspot sells inbound marketing software that helps companies get found on the web. But online, Hubspot’s product is its content. Its blog offers all kinds of useful advice, its tools help individuals and brands measure their online effectiveness, its white papers and training kits introduce prospects to the potential of its services.

What Hubspot TV does is put a human face at the front of the company in age when more and more online customers prefer to connect with a real person. It offers access to its employees – people who know what they’re talking about — and it provides a bit of levity at the end of the work week. This is how all brands should conduct public relations; not by issuing press releases, but by sharing ideas and information that might actually be helpful.

Create new content on a regular basis

Even if you’re not an SEO expert you’re aware that consumers find most services and products via search and social media. If you want Google to deliver you on the first page you need an awful lot of inbound links. How do you get all those links? Good content and lots of it. Producing a new video every week is a great way to do that. Your content could live on Youtube or Vimeo or Live Stream, on your site, on iTunes and as embedded content on numerous blogs. It takes nothing more than a folding table, a couple of chairs and a $400 high-def video camera on a tri-pod. Yes it might also take time, but if you incorporate it into your weekly routine, it’s easy. For Hubspot, it’s a Friday afternoon event. Everyone gathers in the “rec room,” grabs a beer, plays some ping pong, watches the taping and has a great time.

Understand we’re in the midst of the “Good Enough Revolution”

If you’re having a hard time coming to grips with productions that aren’t beautiful, polished and professionally edited, get over it. We’re not talking SuperBowl spot here. It’s just a video, as common these days as an email. And guess what? Most consumers and online viewers don’t care. New trends abound. We’re in the midst of “The Good Enough Revolution,” as Wired so aptly labeled the new preference for fast, easy, portable and accessible.  Which means you don’t have to spend a fortune on everything you produce. Sometimes it’s more important to just be there.

Your community is a distribution channel

It goes without saying that if anyone knows the ideal time to be on Twitter it would be the company where social media scientist Dan Zarrella works. So we can assume that Friday afternoon at 4:00 pm is a good time for tweeting and RT-ing, but even if it isn’t the absolutely best Twitter hour of the week, the show practices a simple tactic that helps make the Hubspot brand more visible.It invites participation from its many Twitter followers, encouraging conversation, taking questions and benefitting from the short posts and messages that followers share on Twitter, essentially turning them into an unpaid media channel. And given Google’s new real-time search feature discussed on this show, there’s the added advantage of better search results.

Give stuff away for free before you sell stuff for money

Now here’s the kicker. Hubspot isn’t simply doing this out of altruism.  It’s selling its products and services. In fact for every subject discussed on the show, for every insight shared, for every opinion offered, there’s a conclusion. And it’s a sales pitch.

Seth Godin’s plan to market his book by targeting influencers? Hubspot wants you to use its tools including Twitter Grader and Blog Grader to find influencers that matter to you. Regarding Google’s real-time search? You need Hubspot’s services to help you elevate your own organic search. And finally, why would you ever pay for social media certification when these guys offer their own free version of training. No doubt yet another tactic to get you in the door as a paying customer.

Damn, now that I’ve written this post it just dawned on me that they probably only invited me on the show in hopes that I might write a piece with their name in it 10 times. Guess it worked. What do you say?  Any other ideas this easy, obvious and inexpensive to help marketers become more visible?

Willing to fail, determined to succeed

The plan was to have a discussion about the value of Twitter. Twitter 24. Hashtag TW24. Twenty four minutes, six minutes for each of four topics: Twitter as a way to expand your tribe; Twitter as a means of discovering new and interesting content; Twitter as a marketing medium for brands; Twitter as a crowdsourcing tool.

Each topic would moderated by one of four different people; @malbonnington, @benkunz, @jtwinsor and me.  Seemed symmetrical, alliterative, efficient. In concept anyway.

But while Twitter is good for all of the aforementioned, it’s not the best tool for a chat.  At least that’s the conclusion of Beancasts’s Bob Knorpp, and AdWeek’s Brian Morrissey, both of whom attempted to participate, and of participant Ben Kunz, who deemed #tw24 an outright failure.

However, what’s interesting, is that even though the intended debate among four, turned into something between chaos and confusion, the exercise did, in fact, prove the initial hypothesis.

I expanded my tribe, meeting the vocal and opinionated Tish Gier.

tishgrier: @MichelleMMM thanks for that info on #TW24. but it looks more like pontificating than conversation. too bad.

tishgrier: @MichelleMMM it’s interesting, but finding a lot more men discussing than women, yet wmn dominate conv. media #tw24

Not to mention Anthony Kalamut, a professor at Seneca College, whom I’ll be hitting up for writers who may want to contribute to The Next Great Generation.

southsideadguy: #tw24 just gave access to a dozen new people to follow and bring new knowledge to my students #MarketingProfs #adeducati

From the stream of comments offered by passersby I discovered new content in the form of an aggregator of B2B blogs just as I’m in the middle of advising a new client on creating their own.

jeremyvictor: #tw24 I am not sure I would have launched http://www.btobbloggers.com without Twitter. It eliminated the need for marketing startup capital

Ben Kunz used the experiment to market his own brand a little bit, turning the “failed” experiment into a post that was subsequently discovered by others.

benkunz: Hive minds: My take on the failed Twitter debate #tw24 – tx @edwardboches, @jtwinsor and @bbhlabs http://tinyurl.com/yce7yr4

KATEBRISTOW: RT @BBHLabs: Here’s @benkunz’s write-up of why the experiment we ran on Twitter yesterday (#tw24) failed – http://tinyurl.com/yce7yr4

And finally, this piece was essentially crowdsourced from the comments in the stream recorded on search.twitter.com.

Some of my favorite comments:

southsideadguy: Twitter has enabled educators like myself to connect a new world of info. Connected to new colleagues. The tribe of ad educators #tw24

uberblond: it’s redefined tribes: tribes aren’t common demos or thinkers, but common topics that unite disparate demos. #tw24

Marc_Meyer: I have maintained for quite some time that the people that I follow on Twitter have become my RSS #tw24

benkunz: Edward – one true story, though. I met @dirkthecow, head of a London PR shop, and he helped by 9-yr-old w homework! #tw24

Jamesbedell: @edwardboches I find jumping into conversations and getting a feel for who the secondary leaders are is a huge step #tw24

benkunz: @jamesbedell – you raise a good point. Sometimes the best ideas come from new “secondary” voices, who aren’t shilling an old formula. #tw24

benkunz: @jtwinsor The mechanics of Twitter itself have been crowdsourced. Retweets. Hashtags. Lists. Users built most of the functions. #tw24

And so, in conclusion,

edwardboches: to those who *tried* to follow #tw24, thanks. we had good intentions 2 do quick 24 min/4 part chat. we won’t give up, we’ll just get better

Selling Detroit with a print ad?

Am I missing something here? Or have I been transported to the 1960s?  I’m skimming current issue of Fortune (yes I’m still a sucker for real magazines) when I get to the back of the book and discover a Time Inc. Special Project: CNNMoney.com’s Selling Detroit. It’s a contest for Detroit ad agencies to create print ads to pitch the city to “smart, young, creative people.”

See anything wrong with this picture yet?  Well check out the print ads and you’ll see plenty.

For starters they’re bad: unoriginal, uninspiring, derivative. One execution, reviving the famous Shackleton ad (admittedly used on this very blog a couple of weeks ago) gets credit for at least suggesting the truth: that this is not for the faint of heart. But the rest? You decide.

The real issue, of course, is that if anyone in the advertising business wants to help Detroit come back, it won’t be with a print ad. In fact doesn’t a print ad in and of itself scream old, stuck in the past, marketing by interruption? Or at least can’t we find a more innovative medium if we want to entice “smart, young, creative people?”

Why wasn’t the assignment to create a Twitter account?  Why didn’t anyone think to identify and gather all the energetic, digitally-centric creative people in Detroit, build a community, and crowdsource ideas?  Start a conversation. Prove the point with dialog, opinions and ideas that would actually demonstrate creative vitality.

Why not invite the easily identifiable entrepreneurs who are trying to start new companies like Bickbot (iphone apps), Bongotones (ring tones) and Lyfe.net (a mobile social media photo service) and get them involved?  Don’t they represent future possibilities?

Why not embrace Twitter, YouTube, Plancast, WordPress, Tongal, Ning or any of the hundred other great platforms that scream progress and are all available for free? They offer a chance to listen, engage, inspire, mobilize and co-create. My guess is that would get the next generation of creative people more excited than a print ad.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to print ads. In fact I love them. And I’m rooting for Detroit as we have an office and clients there. But a contest for a print ad?  In an age when what you do is more important than what you say?  I don’t think so.

But what do you think? Please share.

Is crowdfunding the new way for companies to make donations?

By now we should all know that crowdsourcing is a nifty way to raise money.

In 2004, the technique helped make Howard Dean a viable candidate for president, at least for a little while.

A year later, 21-year old student Alex Tew reminded us of how effective crowdfunding could be when he sold pixels on his home page for $1.00 a piece and raised over $1 million.

In 2007, in a first of its kind experiment, fans pooled $35.00 a piece and bought Ebbsfleet United, a football (soccer) team, albeit a struggling one, in southeast England for just under $1 million.

And more recently, encouraged by the willingness and desire of the community to donate small amounts of money, Kachingle has given us a new concept that hopes to support both online content creators and readers. Its simple model collects $5.00 a month from willing participants, then distributes that money across the web in support of the content most valued by the “crowd” of voluntary contributors.

But crowdfunding actually offers us a chance to do more than raise money.  It can transform the way we make charitable donations, give us yet another way to involve and inspire our community, and perhaps most importantly increase awareness and garner attention for the causes we support.

Today, if your company is like most, you probably make at least some charitable donations every year.  And, I’m willing to bet, you do it the old fashioned way. You write a check and maybe a press release. Perhaps you get your name listed in the back of a program under donors, or even on a plaque in the lobby.

Instead why not invite your community, customers and employees to join you? Preferably in public, over the web, via Twitter, or from your site.  I’m not suggesting you do it to ease your financial sacrifice. In fact, you don’t even have to ask your community to contribute money themselves. Just give them an opportunity to participate, influence, vote or simply feel included.

Here are two examples. This year Grain Food Foundation (full disclosure, Mullen client) planned on donating money to Feeding America, a worthy cause if there was one. But rather than simply do it the tried and true way (write check; write press release) GFF gave customers a chance to join in the process. For every person who visited GFF’s online gallery and created her own original “bread art,” GFF made a contribution. Consumers felt as if they were supporting a cause, even without having to write a check themselves. They helped spread the word by posting their art to Facebook and Twitter. GFF got credit and attention for its effort.  And Feeding America benefitted from the buzz.

For the last few weeks, Lands End has used crowdfunding to collect coats for the homeless. They’ve done it in a way that makes them look good and their customers feel good.  Donate your old coat and Lands End will give you 20 percent off the price of a new coat. Chances are they were going to offer 20 percent off anyway.  I mean what retailer is charging full price these days?  But by getting you to take action, they generate awareness, gather a community and accomplish something meaningful.

Why not take a look at all of your planned actions — planned or otherwise — and ask how you might help the crowd help you?

These are just a couple of ways in which companies can enlist the community to help raise money or at least feel part of a company’s efforts.  Got any others?  Please share.

You can’t lean back if you want to get ahead

My week began by attending the premiere of Lemonade with a bunch of people who’d been spit out by the business of advertising.  Fired because their clients cut budgets, because they worked for “traditional” agencies rather than digital shops, because their old skills were less relevant in a new consumer-controlled world where word of mouth, social media, one-to-one, and analytics are becoming as important as “the big idea” once was.

The movie that was good enough to play in a real movie house, attract a few hundred people, and earn the attention of Katie Couric whose CBS crew showed up to document the entire evening was made possible by the power of social media. Blogs and Twitter introduced the idea, identified subjects, connected volunteers, recruited resources and gathered a tribe that would never have come together in any other way.

Yet when I asked a number of the unemployed in attendance if they had embraced the new platforms and technologies, learned new tactics, mastered the art of personal brand building and started creating and generating content using the new vernacular, many answered with a tentative “not really,” or even a definitive “not yet.”

Amazing when you think about it. They’d lost their jobs because of all the change. The movie about losing jobs could only be made because it of the change. Yet many people still hadn’t embraced the change.

Today I spoke at Boston University’s College of Communication. The subject was (what else) The Future of Advertising. Seems that’s all anyone wants to talk about, from the 4As to CA to Forrester.

In putting a presentation together that might be of use to students, it struck me that the changes we’re seeing affect everything. Consumers are no longer spectators, they’re creators. Individuals whose total resources consist of video cameras and folding tables can create brands. Content distribution that relies on videographers and bloggers is often as effective as media plans that write fat checks to networks and magazines. Creative might be an old-fashioned message, but it’s just as likely to be an experience, an interaction or an application.  And finally, agencies themselves no longer resemble their ancestors. They’re as like to be entirely digital, totally social, or completely crowd-sourced.

There’s an assumption that these students — supposedly native to the land of blogs, Twitter, social media and all things digital — will be more prepared for what’s about to come than those who’ve struggled to survive recent changes. Yet what’s happened in the last few years will appear to be slow motion once mobile really takes off, once applications like Red Laser are in the hands of every consumer, once we’re all walking around with Coolpix and Flip cams and whatever comes next year.

In Googled, the insightful and thorough new book by Ken Auletta, the author reminds us of all the now dying businesses and models that put their energy into defending the status quo rather than embracing the new. “Defensiveness mixed with fear fueled resistance to change.” As Auletta says, “They believed that consumers would always prefer to lean back rather than lean forward when it came to entertainment.”

I don’t think anyone can afford to lean back anymore; not the jobless creatives sitting in the Brattle Theatre watching a movie, not yet to be employed students slouching in their classroom chairs. If you do, you’ll just get blown away.

It’s time to lean in. Embrace what’s coming. Before it even gets here.