BarnRaisers

The Wall Street Journal, in a recent article, Avon Is Late to Social Media’s Party, reported sales for cosmetic products have steadily moved online to sites like Sephora.com, Beauty.com and Drugstore.com. This has contributed to a -75% decline in operating profit for Avon and their 5.8 million sales representatives that sell door-to-door over the last decade.

Recently, Warren Buffet and Coty made a move to takeover a company in crisis.

I feel bad whenever 1-to-1 relationships are replaced by computers. Even though WSJ says  Avon is late to “Social Media’s Party,” I don’t believe  it is. Social media is not about being early or late; it’s there for any brand that is willing to join.

So I called my good friend and social media colleague, Toby Bloomberg, founder of Diva Marketing and co-writer of this blog post and said: “Let’s put our heads together. What can we do to help Avon out?”

Here’s what we came up with; 10 actions Avon should take to Social Media party.

1. BUSINESS STRATEGY: Of any brand, Avon has one of the most powerful social business strategies available. They have a brand community of  5.8 million reps. There are great examples of brands that put their community to work and turned their business around. Take for example, Harley Davidson. This may seem like an odd comparison but stay with us.

On the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970′s, Harley Davidson overhauled their business to realize their most valuable asset was their riders. In other words, the people were even more important than the product so Harley: 1) Spoke to the shared interest of their community before product benefits 2) brought advocates together and let them help build new relationships. Avon needs a business strategy, not a social media strategy. Now, here’s what they can put it to use.

2. “AVON CALLING” ONLINE COMMUNITY: Avon’s famous slogan could now be a live, online community where their sales reps offer daily advice about Avon products, deals, help customers with a cosmetic question, refer someone to the Avon rep in their area and talk about who they are as people (e.g. where they like to go on vacation). By the way, this is what Harley does daily at HDTalking.com, a customer created content community of close to 400,000 members. P&G also has a highly successful online community, Being Girl, for their Tampax and Always brands that has achieved a 4-to-1 ROI over traditional channels. Avon even has a online community in the UK, Avon Connects, demonstrating they are not late to the party, they just have to invite the rest of the world to their party.

3. “LIKE” US ON FACEBOOK (AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS): Every brand wants you to “Like” them and Avon has a pretty robust but commercial Facebook page that 660,000 people already like. They could use their sales reps more and show a human side. For example, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, recently produced a video called “Likeapella” to celebrate the people who like them. Not to suggest that Avon do the same thing but to make the point that major brands need to use social media to make a more personal connection. Here’s what Kraft did.

4. AVON CUSTOMER APPRECIATION DAYS (VIA TWITTER SEARCH): If Avon representative wanted to build 1-to-1 relationships in larger venues, they could go to high traffic locations in their area like a mall; then, if they use Twitter Search, they could find other women in the same mall and begin a conversation the very same way with the very same techniques they use when selling door-to-door.

5. KLOUT PERKS: With 5.8 million sales reps, they must have a very large number who have high Klout scores. Why not demonstrate to how powerful they already are in social media. Put this social influence to work and see how many rewards Avon reps can get through “Klout Perks.” This would show how much social influence sales reps already have.

6. AVON PINTEREST: The newest darling of the social networks, Pinterest, aligns with Avon’s targeted female demographic. Online products provide Avon with the base for creating a Pinterest page that has multiple benefits from reinforcing community with boards that highlight new and seasonal products, provide lifestyle the “Avon way” with beauty to showing the caring side of Avon through its nonprofit work. In addition, likes, repins and comments offer Avon new consumer insights.

7. AVON PINTEREST CONTEST: Taking Pinterest one step further is the idea of a “Pin It To Win It” contest. Avon has the opportunity to engage with its customers in creative ways that engages both customers and sales representatives. For example, many of Avon’s products are colorful from its nail polish to lip glow. A red, white and blue Fourth of July themed challenge could create fireworks of fun.

8. AVON SALES REP SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING: Avon has created an innovative online training program, Beauty of Knowledge, for their sales reps. Topics range from how to start your new Avon business to money management, logistics, goal setting and traditional marketing support. However, in my research I came across sales reps who had posted on social networks the need and their desire for social media courses to be included in their training. Although Avon sales reps are currently involved in social media many are still have challenges on how to start and/or how to take their initiatives to the next level. In addition to the training we suggest that Avon consider developing a series of template models for Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

9. AVON MOBILE APP: Smart phones and tablets have opened additional eCommerce channels and created new ways to engage with customers. With the ubiquity of smart phones branded apps continue to grow in popularity. Research conducted by Women at NBCU’s Brand Power Index found that women are more likely to have gaming apps on their smart phone (75%of women versus 67 % of men). What fun it would be for Avon to explore developing a gaming app and of course, a mobile commerce app.

10. SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT: Including social media as part of a marketing communications strategy can help accelerate achieving your goals. However, with so many moving pieces, Avon doesn’t need more measurement, they need to identify the ones that matter, their Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), and report, track and be prepared to take action on them.

Maybe, if Avon follows this plan, it would let Warren Buffet and Coty know just who they’re dealing with.

Some great brands have turned their business around when they realize their community is their strongest brand asset. Do you think these actions to join the Social Media party would help Avon and their 5.8 million sales reps turn their business around?

If there is a commandment in digital marketing, it’s Content is King, with good reason. Relevant content is a brand’s most valuable asset.

But it would be mistake to believe that is all you need. As of May 2012, there are 650 million websites; 203 million are active websites and, according to this chart from Netcraft, they are growing in leaps and bounds.

The good news is your audience, and Google, love quality content and, if you provide it on a regular basis, you will see your search rank rise.

Sure, Content is King but, if you want your kingdom to get found, here are 12 SEO steps to take.

KEYWORDS

• SEE WHAT THE SEARCH ENGINES SEE IN YOU: If you have an analytics tool like Google Analytics, look at the keywords and key phrases people use to find your site. For example, on this site, there are roughly 150 case studies that prove ROI in areas like social media, CRM, social commerce and customer service. “Case studies” is  one of the most often used phrases people use to find this site. We are interested in an audience that is interested in marketing case studies, we’ll keep writing these blogs. It attract both a desirable audience and the search engines.
• KNOW WHO TO ATTRACT: For every business, there a wide disparity between best and worst customers. Google Analytics can tell you, for example, where your audience comes from (e.g. Search, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Direct), how much time each group spends, how many pages each group views so you can write to the people that matter most and attract more of them.
• LOOK AT THE COMPETITION: Competitive analysis tools like Compete and Alexa give you much of the information in the above points for your key competitors. This gives you an understanding as well as ideas on what to write about vis-a-vis key competitors.
• CREATE YOUR “SEED” LIST: Now, you’re ready to look for the single words (short tail) and multi-word phrases (long tail) you want for your business. Using search tools like Keyword Tracker, Google AdWords Keyword Tool  and SEO Book, you can easily create lists that show search volume and competitiveness. You have built a foundation for your content kingdom.

COPYWRITING

• WRITE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE, NOT SEARCH ENGINES: Your audience, not the search engines, is your end user and they expect you to educate and inform them before they buy. So, use keywords and key phrases that are conversational as you would talk to a person, not a search engine.
• RECOGNIZE DIFFERENT TYPES OF READERS: There are three types of readers: 1) Researchers, 2) Shoppers and 3) Buyers. Researchers want general information in laymen’s terms; shoppers want comparisons and buyers want specific terminology and facts. All are important because each plays a role from building outreach to generating revenue. So know who you are talking to and why.
• APPEALS TO NEEDS, ASK QUESTIONS AND INFORM: Although there are different types of readers, they all have in common unmet needs that you can appeal to by asking questions and providing information.
• WRITE DESCRIPTIVE CONTENT IN A NATURAL FLOW: This is a difference between these statements: 1) Look here for the latest ROI cases studies in social media, CRM and social commerce and 2) We show you case studies for a business similar to yours that is proving return on investment (ROI) and growing their bottom line using social media, CRM and social commerce. Both say the same thing and use the same keywords. One talks at you; one talk to you, says what’s in it for you and encourages you to get involved. Which one is more convincing to you?

SITE OPTIMIZATION

• DON’T PUT ALL YOUR CONTENT EGGS IN ONE BASKET: It important to know the keywords and key phrases that drive your audience to your website. It’s equally important not to put them all on your homepage so they don’t compete for your reader’s attention and the search engines.
• PLAN EACH PAGE OF YOUR WEBSITE AROUND A CORE PIECE OF CONTENT: If you plan a page for each piece of core content, you build a kingdom for your content that is far reaching and strong.
• HAVE A PLAN FOR PROMOTING CONTENT: Blog at least once a week, publish content on social networks and optimize your website for mobile. These are “best practices” for sharing content which studies from HubSpot show increase website traffic +30% or more. A good place to see how you are doing is HubSpot’s Website Grader.
• TRACK, REPORT, OPTIMIZE AND REPEAT: Let the same tools that helped you at the start, keep your strategy on track and improve. You’ve created your kingdom. Now, be a kind, compassionate and prolific ruler.

80% of people begin their journey to a website through the query on a search engine. Once they type in specific keywords, 46% click on the #1 website listed in organic search. To show you, here is a brief :30 clip.

In this controlled video test, called a “heat map,” people use keywords to search for an unmet need and then click on the website that best meets their need. The blue circles are the mouse movements of many individual searches and the hot colors represent where the most activity occurs.

Conclusions are: 1) Know the most relevant keywords for your business or brand and 2) get to a top position. But does that mean you should focus your attention on what might cause search engines to give you a top rank at the expense of writing for your audience? Never.

Here are 25 reasons to write for your audience before the search engines.

1. Search engines are not mind readers
2. Search engines can’t figure out who your target audience is
3. Search engines don’t know where they spend time online
4. Search engines can’t reach out to them
5. Search engines don’t raise your rank until you start attracting an audience to your website
6. Search engines can’t: 1) Be relevant, 2) educate and 3) persuade to increase your business as well as your rank
7. Search engines are dumb. They don’t recognize what’s relevant. They recognize text patterns
8. Search engines aren’t smart enough to know whether the text patterns are you talking to your audience or you talking to yourself
9. Search engines don’t know if your text is written in a natural flow and reads well
10. Search engines don’t know the difference between an introduction and a call to action
11. Search engines can’t “link” your site with other influential sites to raise your rank by recognizing your website as an authority
12. Search engine can’t ask your audiences for comments to more “links” and raise your rank
13. Search engines can’t read your analytics to optimize the keywords and content that is raising your rank
14. Search engines don’t recognize whether the audience coming to your site is there to: 1) research, 2) shop or 3) buy
15. Search engines can’t share your content
16. Search engines can’t speak your audience’s language or feel their pain
17. Search engines can’t give your audience what they want
18. Search engines can’t survey your audience so you keep improving your website and keep them coming back
19. Search engines can’t install “breadcrumbs,” the  navigation aid used in user interfaces to allow users to keep track of their locations within programs or documents
20. Search engines can’t keep your content fresh
21. Search engines can’t add testimonials or reviews which is the language of your audience and is similar to those who might be searching for your site
22. Search engine can’t create and keep a customer
23. Search engines can’t recognize advocates
24. Search engines can’t reward your loyal customer
25. Search engines can’t make your personality shine through. Your personality counts because people like to do business with people they know

Of course, for digital marketing, the search engine play a critical role but they will never take the place of good research, high levels of involvement and strong, well-written content.

I am fortunate to be teaching a “hands on” Mini-MBA in SEO, SEM and Web Analytics through Rutgers University and with two colleagues, Mike Moran and Tim Peter. Creating a content strategy and writing great content are an area of focus. If this is of interest, here are the details.

Will you be writing for your audience before the search engines?

The idea behind 6 degrees of separation is, through “friend of a friend” connections, everyone is only 6 steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person.

The theory was originally presented by Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy, in a 1929 short story.  It was a popular play in 1993 written by John Guare and then a trivia game called Six Degree of Kevin Bacon that Kevin turned into a charitable organization called SixDegrees.org.

The theory was first tested in 1967 by psychologist Stanley Milgram from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb.

The idea of 6 degrees of separation was responsible for the early thought behind social media.

Is the theory true? Here are 5 studies that prove social media is less than 6 degrees of separation.

1. FACEBOOK PROVES IT’S 4.74 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: Scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74. The experiment took a month and involved all of Facebook’s 721 million users. The study, released in November 2011, found that the average number of links from one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74. In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37.

2. TWITTER SHOWS IT’S 4.67 STEPS: In a study of 5.2 million Twitter friendships (friend and follower relationships), Sysomos, found the most common friendship distance is five steps. (The average distance is 4.67 steps). The second most common friendship distance is four steps. On average, about 50% of people on Twitter are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps away. After visiting an average of 3.32 people within the friend network, Twitter users can expect to find one of their followers. The results, released in April 2010, are:

3. LINKEDIN IS SET UP ON 3 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: Although LinkedIn has yet to do a study of the magnitude of Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn, perhaps more than any other social network, was set-up about the idea of degrees of separation. In LinkedIn case, it’s 3 degrees of separation which are:

1. You already know them
2. You know someone that knows them
3. You know someone that knows someone that knows them

4. MICROSOFT PROVES IT’S 6.6 STEPS: Conducted in 2008, Microsoft looked at 30 billion conversations among 240 million people fron its Instant Messenger product to construct a communication graph with 180 million nodes and 1.3 billion undirected edges, creating the largest social network every constructed and analyzed. It found the average path length among Messenger users was 6.6 steps. It also found people tended to communicate more with each other when they were a similar age, language, and location, and that cross-gender conversations were both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender.

5. EMAIL STUDY SHOWS 5 TO 7 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: In 2003, Peter Sheridan Dodds and his colleagues at Columbia University conducted a modern version of 6 degree of separation through studying e-mails on the Internet. They recruited over 60,000 participants from 166 different countries for the experiment. By factoring in the rate of dropouts, the researchers calculated a median chain length of between 5 to 7 people.

These studies show there is no shortage in diligence trying to show if the theory behind 6 degrees of separation stands up in social media. Do they prove it to you?

Celebrities give social networks credibility. A driving factors of Twitter in its early days was celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian and Barack Obama bought in to the idea of sharing their lives through Tweets. Now the fastest growing website in history, Pinterest, is gathering celebrities who are buying in to sharing their lives through Pinboards.

Pinterest is already the 3rd most visited social network and is roughly 70% female. This makes Pinterest one of the most unique marketing tools in some time as women influence 85% of all purchases.

So far, celebrities on Pinterest require some seeking out but, since celebrities are leading indicators, my guess is how celebrities use Pinterest will be a harbinger to how marketers use it for brands.

Here are 10 celebrities on Pinterest. What do they tell us? That celebrity use Pinterest for 3 reasons. See for yourself.

• Expressionists
• Enterprisers
• Experimenters

EXPRESSIONISTS: Are not “A” list celebrities but they are people known for their distinct personalities and hootspa, that comes alive on Pinterest. Their Pinboards are the most authentic and their profiles are the most genuine. They demonstrate realness generates positive awareness. In the case of Aylssa Moreno, we also have a successful crossover Tweeter to Pinboarder. . You can either click on their name to get to their Pinterest page or view their image below.

EXPERIMENTERS: Are explorers looking to find their way. Mark Zuckerberg may not have written anything in his profile but is the most prolific in terms of pins. Demi Moore, if this really is her, clearly looks to be trying to find her way. We hope she finds it.

Demi Moore and Mark Zuckerberg 

What do these 10 celebrities on Pinterest tell you?