Posts Tagged ‘social marketing’

Why I Co-Founded Laser Burn Media

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Dan Cheek - Why I Co-Founded Laser Burn Media

After serving four very exciting years in the United States Army, I came back home to Northeast Pennsylvania.  Still adjusting to civilian life, I began to take an interest in the Internet and social media.  I began working for RCN, where I spent my days troubleshooting high-speed and dial-up Internet connections for customers.  At RCN, I learned a lot about how the Internet works, the mechanics of a network and how to maintain it.  And in my free time, I became increasingly interested in building websites.

I wasn’t then, and am not now, a programmer.  I know very little about working with CSS, Python, or Java.  I can do basic things with HTML, but that’s the extent of my coding prowess.  However, thanks to the many powerful website publishing software platforms out there, WordPress being chief among them, I was able to create websites without having to know how to program.  For me, this was huge.  I began building sites for me, my friends, and family.  Most were short lived and just for fun.  It wasn’t long before I began to pay attention to how many hits those sites were getting and how the tweaks and changes I made to the sites affected traffic levels.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I was beginning to learn the basics of search engine optimization.

I also began promoting some of these sites on various social media platforms.  It was also about this time that I left RCN and enrolled at Wilkes University.  In exchange for my four years of military service, the Army had agreed to help me pay for my education.  I took full advantage of the GI Bill and became a full-time student, majoring in Business Administration.  The business program at Wilkes is very forward thinking and hands on.  During the freshman year, all the business students are put into groups and told to form a business.  The first semester is spent planning the business and the second is where it is executed.  Any profits made by the business are then used, at the end of the Freshman year, to fund a public service project.

My group decided to create an advertising booklet that we would distribute all over the area.  We pulled some strings at the school printing office and got them to agree to print all of them for us at no cost.  We may have forgotten to tell them we were looking at two runs of four thousand copies each (each copy contained about 10 pages), but whatever.  Agreement in hand (we made them put it in writing and the suggestion of one of our business professors), we began to visit local businesses, asking them to place an ad in our book.  The prices for ads ranged from $25 to $100, depending on the size and location of the ad.  With no production costs, everything we made was profit.  In the end we grossed over $2,000.

As I progressed through business school, I decided that I wanted to make a career out of marketing.  I was also becoming more and more involved with social media and website design.  I became interested in local politics and decided that I would use the Internet and social media to take on a mayor who was running for Congress.  While this mayor was wildly popular, he struck me as a bigot and a moron.  I set up a blog and began to promote it via social media.  I read up on SEO and learned how to build quality back-links to increase the site’s performance in search engines.  I learned how to write good content, how to partner with other bloggers to spread my message, and how to move my ideas across various social media platforms.  That site, which I still run today, attracted quite a bit of attention from local, state, and national media.  I achieved a number one search ranking on Google, ahead of the mayor’s own campaign website.  The mayor lost that election (although he is running again, which is why the site remains active).

I graduated Wilkes University in May of 2009.  I graduated into one of the worst economies the nation had experienced in a long time.  Jobs were hard to find.  Many companies weren’t hiring.  I tried getting in with several local media and marketing firms, unsuccessfully.  When I ran out of marketing firms to apply to, I decided to form my own.  I partnered with one of my classmates at Wilkes, John Botch, and we formed Laser Burn Media.  John had interned for a long time with a local online marketing firm and was Google Adwords certified.  He knew all about designing and executing online search marketing campaigns.  I knew quite a bit about building blogs, using social media as a marketing platform, and how to use the Internet to build relationships with a target audience.

Today, Laser Burn Media is one of the few online marketing firms operating in the Northeast Pennsylvania area.  John and I know we operate in a rapidly evolving industry, where things are constantly changing.  We spend a lot of time keeping up with all the latest ideas, strategies, and news related to online and social media marketing.  Both of us are determined to become the very best at what we do.  We want Laser Burn Media to be the go-to online marketing company for small and medium sized businesses.  We take what we do very seriously, put in a lot of hours to get better at what we do and how we do it, and are determined to earn the trust and respect of our competitors, our clients, and our community.  I co-founded Laser Burn Media because I want to be the absolute best at what I do and I want to do it on my terms.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Understanding the Culture of Social Media Platforms

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Understanding the Culture of Social Media Platforms

Every social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, etc.) has it’s own “culture.”  Each of these platforms has it’s own language, its own customs, and its own personality.  Paying attention to these cultures is critically important to anyone looking to use these social media platforms for marketing or brand building.  Ignoring, or not properly understanding, the culture of a particular platform will make your marketing efforts suffer.  And you’ll look silly, and will be ignored, in the process.

Understanding the culture of a particular social media platform is no different than understanding the culture of another group, city, business, or country.  By that, I mean that it requires a lot of listening and observation.  When I was in the Army, I was stationed in South Korea for fourteen months.  During my time there, one of the most valuable lessons I learned was how to appreciate a different culture.  There were many things about the South Korean culture that, at first, didn’t make any sense to me.  For a 21 year old kid, it was a lot to take in.  Over time, however, I did learn to accept and appreciate the culture there.  Once I decided to make the effort to learn and experience as much as I could about the South Korean society, my time there became much more rewarding and enjoyable.  It’s no different when it comes to understanding and operating on a social media platform.

To give a better idea of what I’m talking about when I refer to a social media platform’s culture, let’s use Twitter as an example.  Twitter represents a community of 200 million users who communicate with each other in 140 characters or less.  Certain symbols and abbreviations (@, #, RT, etc) have taken on special meaning and they have adopted unique customs like Follow Friday and Music Monday.  The communication across Twitter is rapid-fire, with many users sending multiple updates an hour.  Compare that with Facebook, where most users rarely post more than three times a day.  Someone who’s attempting to use Twitter to market a brand or business had better be well versed in the culture of the platform.  Otherwise, they will be quickly ignored for the same reason that telemarketers are widely ignored.

So does this mean that your marketing department needs to enlist a sociologist to help you navigate social media?  No.  However, it does mean that before any campaign is launched across any social media platform, time and care must be taken to understand the culture of that platform.  Anyone looking to use any social platform for marketing purposes needs to understand who uses that platform, how they use it, and how best to interact and build a relationship with its community.  Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting a lot of time with little to show for it.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Posted in Social Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

5 Ways Social Media Can Hurt Your Business

Monday, May 10th, 2010

As the co-founder and president of a social marketing firm, I probably should avoid writing blog titles like this.  However, I’m going to do it anyway.  Why?  Because I think it’s an important side of social media that you may not hear much about.  Especially from social media professionals.  The truth is that social media is a very powerful thing and it can bite you if you don’t treat it with respect.  Here are five ways that social media can hurt your business.

  1. You ignore it. This is probably a bad idea.  Contrary to what many business owners believe, just because you don’t set up an account on Twitter or Facebook doesn’t mean that your business isn’t on Twitter or Facebook.  Or 4square.  Or Myspace.  Or on someone’s blog.  Business journals are chock-full of articles detailing how this company or that company got blindsided by social media.  Ask the people at Domino’s Pizza what happens when two idiot employees decide to post a video on YouTube.  Ask them about the hellstorm that was ignited by social media and how they had to scramble to respond.  If you ignore social media, be prepared to pay dearly.
  2. You’re here, your customers are there. It doesn’t help you to have an account on a social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.), regardless of how popular that particular platform may be, if your customers aren’t using it.  Not everyone has a Facebook account.  Not everyone has a MySpace account.  Some people have both, some have neither.  The point is, if your trying to engage your customers in a sandbox that they don’t play in, you’re wasting your time and, worse, making your brand and your business look foolish and out of touch.  Don’t do this.
  3. You abuse it. Want a sure fire way to piss people off and ruin relationships?  Send someone some spam.  Your friends, fans, and followers are not a captive audience.  If you engage in mindless self-promotion or employ spam-like tactics, you will lose people.  People will stop caring about what you say and you will be ignored.  You will then have to work very, very hard and spend lots and lots of money to undue the damage.  Social media is kind of like a powerful pain medication.  It can do wonders if used properly.  And if you abuse it, it can kill you.
  4. You suck at it. It’s very easy to set up an account on Facebook.  It’s also not all that difficult to successfully use it to interact with and add value to your target audience.  If you know what you’re doing.  However, if you set up a blog and it sucks, be prepared for the consequences.  At best, people will just think that you suck at blogging.  At the worst, people will think that the quality of your blog or your tweets are indicative of your company in general.  “Maybe if his tweets are this horrible, his pizza also sucks.”  Some people, potentially many people, will think this.
  5. You say what you’re thinking. This could be a good thing.  Or, alternatively, it could be a very, very bad thing.  Everything that you put out across social media is probably read by someone.  Say the wrong thing to the right person (or persons) and you could very easily have a full blown mess on your hands.  This sounds like common sense, but from my experience in working with businesses and individuals, I can assure you that it’s not.  Often times, you don’t know you’ve said the wrong thing until after you see the reaction.  Be very, very careful with your message and how/where/when/to whom you broadcast it.

Okay, so now you’ve all stopped reading and are frantically deleting your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Before you do this, however, try and take a few deep breaths.  Yes, social media can, potentially, be very harmful to your business or your brand.  But only if you put yourself in a position for it to harm you.  Used intelligently, social media can take your business to levels it would be otherwise unable to reach.  The difference between very good and very bad thing happening can be managed (though not always controlled) by you and the decisions you make about how to implement your social media strategy (or lack thereof).

Many businesses can, and do, use social media every day and they are very successful at it.  If you understand social media and have a plan to implement it into your sales and marketing efforts, awesome.  However, if you aren’t quite there yet and would like help, please consider allowing us to get your business to where it needs to be.  Laser Burn Media has experience working with small and medium sized businesses and we can partner with you to use social media to grow and strengthen your brand.  If you need help, just ask.

All for now.

See also: Facebook: Are Your Privates Private?

-Dan Cheek
www.LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com

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Posted in Online Marketing, Social Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Is Your Business Carpet Bombing?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

When some business owners hear the term “social marketing”, they often think of it as some sort of overly complicated, super fancy mumbo jumbo that was dreamed up by a bunch of Internet geeks.  “Traditional Advertising” is the type of lingo they are more comfortable with.  Newspaper ads.  Television spots.  Radio ads.  Billboards.  You know, mass media.  That’s what you do if you are serious about advertising and growing your business.  Right?  At Laser Burn Media, we refer to this mindset as “Carpet Bombing.”

For decades, if the Air Force wanted an important target destroyed, they would use a tactic known as carpet bombing.  Carpet bombing involved using dozens (sometimes even hundreds!) of large, slow bombers to drop millions of tons worth of bombs on the target.  The idea was that even if only 10 percent of the bombs hit the target, it would still be destroyed.  Mass media advertising is the same exact thing.  Marketers throw up an ad in front of as many people as possible, hoping that maybe 10 percent of the people who see the ad actually visit the store and, of those ten people, hopefully two or three actually buy something.  This is as inefficient as it sounds.

But, much like the Air Force, marketers had no other option besides carpet bombing.  For the Air Force, that changed with the introduction of “smart bombs.”  A smart bomb could be dropped exactly where the Air Force wanted it.  One bomb equaled one destroyed target.  For marketers, the Internet provided a similar ability.  Through the use of various social media technologies, a marketer can identify the target audience, decide the best way to engage them, and then target those people with individual, relevant marketing materials.  It’s the marketing equivalent of dropping a laser guided bomb through the front door of the building that needs to be blown up.

Think about it.  Traditional advertising prices are based, for the most part, on how many “impressions” they can make.  A radio spot during rush hour costs more, for example, than one aired during the middle of the night because more people are listening during rush hour.  The radio station has no way of knowing, exactly, how many people are listening to the radio during rush hour.  They don’t know how many people change the station once the music stops and the commercials start.  And the radio station has no way of knowing how many people that are listening are actually paying attention.  All the marketer can hope for is that a lot of people hear the ad and that, of those, at least some people respond to it.

Considering the capabilities of social marketing, this approach is stupid.  It’s a waste of money, time, and marketing resources.  The radio station will try to convince you otherwise, but that’s because their revenues depend on keeping this backwards, inefficient system operating.  Just like a dial-up Internet provider will try and convince people that high-speed Internet is over rated and too expensive.  But social marketing, if done correctly, is multiple times more powerful and more effective than traditional media.

For example, a social marketer who is marketing a new beer can scan blogs, Twitter, and social networking sites to identify people who 1.) Like beer 2.) Live in the target geographic region and 3.) Talk about beer to their peer group.  The marketer can then customize relevent, value-adding interactions to these individuals via things like Twitter direct messages and replies, responding to blog posts, providing links to YouTube video clips, invited to Facebook groups, etc.  The result is that the marketer’s efforts are being targeted directly at the right people.  People who have no interest in drinking beer, for example, aren’t targeted.  The marketer can then track the effectiveness of the marketing campaign and make adjustments to make it even more pinpoint and more effective.

I’m not saying that traditional mass marketing doesn’t work.  I’m saying that compared to social marketing, traditional mass marketing is less efficient, both in terms of time and money.  At Laser Burn Media, for example, we are constantly looking at ways to make our methods more pin-point and more effective.  Are the owners of billboards doing that?  CAN they do that?  Probably not.  So to all you “carpet bombers” out there, maybe you should consider adding a few smart bombs to your aresenal.

Enjoy the day, everybody!

-Dan Cheek
www.LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com

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Posted in Social Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Why Is Your Company On Twitter?

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Pac-Man on Twitter

Seriously.  Why is your company on Twitter?  This may seem like a silly question, but it’s one worth considering.  Too many companies, brands, and organizations don’t consider the question, I think.  They jump on Twitter and begin spitting out Tweets, follow thousands of people hoping that all of them will return the favor, and for the most part, begin what can essentially be described as a Twitter Spam campaign.  This type of “strategy”, as you can imagine, accomplishes nothing.  And, in fact, it can even hurt your brand, as opposed to strengthening and growing it.

If your business is on Twitter, or thinking about using Twitter, you need to have a strategy in place.  Twitter is, in the right hands, a very powerful and effective marketing tool.  It allows you to identify members of your target market(s) and engage them directly.  It can also be used to quickly respond to questions and concerns from customers and other stakeholders.  Backed by a well-planned marketing and communication strategy, Twitter can be just as powerful, or even more powerful than a traditional media campaign.  Without a strategy, however, none of this is possible.

The world that is Twitter is a fast-paced, hyper-crowded environment.  Attention spans are low and you only have 140 characters (or less) to grab your audience’s attention, convey your message, and to make it resonate.  Imagine standing on a small stage with hundreds of other people, all shouting at one person in the audience.  This is what Twitter is like, as the average Twitter user follows at least 50 other people.  It’s not uncommon for someone to follow over a hundred or more.  If you don’t have a plan to successfully operate in this environment, why even bother?  Your time will be better spent focusing on other aspects of running your business.

I’m not trying to talk you or your organization out of using Twitter.  Quite the opposite.  I think you should be using Twitter.  But you need to go about it in the right way.  Like any other communication strategy, if you can produce a message that effectively communicates the value that your products or services offer to the customer, you will do well.  Basically, if you can provide a reason for people to pay attention to what you’re saying, people will listen.  This isn’t necessarily hard, but it does require some effort and thought.  And, really, this is no different from any other marketing campaign.

The important thing is to develop a Twitter marketing and communication strategy.  If your Tweets are “spammy”, irrelevant, or unclear, your organization will never achieve any level of success on Twitter.  The old saying of “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well,” comes to mind.  Twitter can help your business and your brand become more successful.  Hundreds of organizations are achieving this type of success right now.  With a well thought out plan, yours can, too.

-Dan Cheek
www.LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com

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Posted in Social Marketing Strategy, Twitter | No Comments »

Welcome to Laser Burn Media

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Laser Burn Media

Hello and welcome to LaserBurnMedia.com, the official homepage of Laser Burn Media.  We are a next-generation Online Marketing and Social Media company, based in North Eastern Pennsylvania (NEPA).  It is our belief that through intelligent, targeted use of online technologies, we can help our clients’ strengthen their brands, grow their businesses, and develop lasting competitive advantage over their competitors.  Our team is fiercely dedicated to ensuring that our clients develop and maintain dominant positions online, allowing them to leverage that into a powerful advantage.

Laser Burn Media is not just another online marketing company.  It is our goal to become one of the most innovative, most creative, and most effective marketing companies in the world.  We will use every tool, every technology, and every skill at our disposal to ensure that we consistently exceed our clients expectations.  We will work tirelessly to ensure that at all times, we act with the highest degree of integrity and professionalism.  And we will help ensure that the companies, individuals, and organizations that entrust their brands with us experience the highest level of success and return on their investment as possible.

This website, in addition to serving as our official corporate website, will also host our company blog.  Here, we hope to interact with all of you as we share our insights and observations into the world of online marketing and social media.  This blog is not intended to be a one way conversation.  We want to hear from all of you, as well.  Because, hey, that’s what the Internet and social media is all about, right?

-Dan Cheek
www.LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@LaserBurnMedia.com

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