Making Money from Content

I made the claim in a previous article (If everybody loves Super Bowl ads, then why don’t advertisers always make Super Bowl-quality ads? on Spark Minute) that all ads during the Super Bowl should have pointed people to a website or some type of social media interaction. In a single 30-second advertisement, I argued that it’s very difficult to introduce a new concept in an ad and then motivate people to purchase.

Prior to social media advertisers solved that dilemma with frequency. There was this theory that if a person simply sees an advertising message three or four times that’s all the motivation they’ll need to purchase. In my early days of advertising (prior to the public proliferation of the Internet) I designed these programs that did regression analysis that showed the success levels of reach and frequency, the two critical variables in traditional advertising campaigns. By early Lotus standards, these simple line charts were state of the art and my analysis really impressed the client. I look back at it now and I’m amazed I wasted my time on so much BS.

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This article is part of a road show presentation series I’m doing in Toronto for Intertainment Media, owners of Itibiti Systems. This post has been reprinted on the Intertainment Media blog.

Al O’Grady from Agoracom interviewed me about some current trends in social media. Nice little overview. See a larger version here.

For more, read 14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media. Plus, there are additional articles and coverage from my Toronto tour.

Not every call into a call center is monitored and edited, so why should you want or try to do that with social media? This is the question to ask your clients if they’re wanting to go through multiple levels of approval at all levels of social media engagement.

Your goal should be to train staff on how to engage in social media in a way that answers questions correctly and stays within your corporate brand. That was the discussion I had with Daryl Stansfield, Digital Account Director at PHD, in Toronto, ON. I was happy that he mentioned having a previous financial client (see previous post about financial concerns in social media) that had a Facebook forum that was so successful that users started helping users.

Today was my first day of a week long road show I’m doing in Toronto where I’m speaking at various companies about social media and specifically how they can grow their industry voice with social media and make money from it.

You can read the full article and other pertinent information here: “14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Voice with Social Media.”

My first presentation was at Raymond James Ltd., a North American investment firm. During and after my presentation, I got some of the standard questions such as “Who has time for this?” and “What about privacy?” But we also talked about the incredibly tricky situation social media presents to Raymond James and other financial firms. They face such a mountain of regulatory issues that they don’t even both engaging in social media.

I’m not a lawyer, nor an SEC commissioner, but we got to discussing the issue and there was some consensus that being able to blog online or engage in any kind of social media discussion would require creating a dividing line of what content you offer up for free that can be unregulated and what content do you charge for that is regulated.

Advice vs. information and opinion

This is the initial broadly agreed upon dividing point. Advice is actionable, regulated, and can potentially be liable. There are compliance issues with regard to communicating with customers. The question is can information and opinion that is given out to anyone whether they’re a customer or not, avoid being held to the same standards? It’s not actionable advice.

Attending the session were also some members of CHF Investor Relations. After speaking with them and some employees at Raymond James, I realized they run into many of the same customer service problems that other companies must contend with. For example, when certain investment news hits, the financial discussion boards and blogosphere are all abuzz. In turn, they get calls from customers asking their opinion on a certain story or issue. If the opinion is being communicated over the phone, why not just take that same opinion and write it up in a blog? Such a move will provide two valuable benefits:

1. Increase discoverability – If people are calling you about a certain issue, chances are pretty high they’re also typing that issue into a search query. If you provide your opinion on the matter, that opinion will start appearing in natural searches. Being successfully discovered is all about timing. If people are calling you about a matter at 12pm on a Monday, make sure you get your opinion out within the next hour or two. Don’t wait until Thursday next week. Your audience will have moved on by then.

2. Ease customer service – If you’re getting hammered with people asking the same question, it would be a lot easier on your entire staff if you just pointed everyone to the same piece. It will cut down customer service hours dramatically.

Here are a couple of good follow up articles:

Top 12 financial advisors using social media – “The New Rules of Investing” blog compiled its list of top 12 investors taking advantage of social media plus links to all their social media sites (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.)

Financial Firms Turn to Social Media to Attract New Gen X, Y Clients – Story from Wall Street and Technology about how some firms are taking the leap into social media, most notably Wells Fargo and Zecco, to attract new customers that are going to inherit the assets from their current customers.