While the title is a bit outlandish, Vadim Lavrusik wrote a great summary article about the 12 things Newspapers Should Do to Survive. Much of his advice, such as publishing on multiple platforms and going niche, is right on target (and almost exactly what I've stated I'm trying to accomplish with our social media strategy at the VC Star).
About the only thing missing was an overall framework that ties everything together... I'd like to think I've been working on such a framework and have presented it to multiple audiences (including on a radio show, a webinar and a conference presentation), but have never written about it, so here goes.
FOF Marketing Defined
I call the overall framework FOF Marketing... FOF standing for friend-of-friend, friend-of-fan or friend-of-follower.
The idea behind FOF Marketing is to put your online marketing focus on creating content that will be shared by the friends/fans/followers of your business with their friends/fans/followers.
If you're creating content and using tools that's focused on reaching your existing base, then you're likely creating dead-end content that's not helping your overall social media efforts. Instead of creating content that's meant to be "consumed", we really need to be thinking of creating content that's worth sharing... and then using the tools and technologies that make sharing your content easy.
FOF Marketing = Relevance
The main reason to be interested in FOF marketing is that it puts your online focus exactly where it should be... On attracting an extremely relevant audience.
Traditionally, the way to attract relevant traffic to your website was to improve how your site ranked in Google because Google's search algorithms is well tuned to send targeted traffic. However, the one audience that's often more relevant than Google's search engine are the existing friends and fans of your business. In other words, do you want to find people who are likely to be interested in local ventura county sports, then your best bet is to reach out to the friends of people who actively engage in Ventura County sports...
FOF Marketing in Practice
As someone who loves to market businesses online, I've become enamored with the Facebook platform because they make good FOF marketing so easy. If you write a status update (could be text, a link, a video, a photo, etc.) and someone leaves a comment, or "likes" your update, then that information gets sent to their profile and is likely to be shared with their friends. In addition, if you're running a Facebook business page, and someone engages with on your business page, then Facebook will often help spread the word to their friends by recommending your page to their friends. This is the classic FOF Marketing in that people are sharing things with their friends/fans/followers by simply engaging with your content.
Interestingly, retweeting within Twitter can be a form of FOF Marketing in that it can really help you spread your content to the friends-of-followers (again, a ridiculously relevant audience for most businesses including newspapers!). The fact that retweeting is such a widely-used aspect of twitter makes it an extremely effective way to generate interest in your content should you be so lucky as to write updates that others find worth sharing with their followers!
I've been thinking about the concept of FOF Marketing for quite a while, but one of things that prompted me to create this post was the news today that the Huffington Post showed they get the power of FOF Marketing by creating a deep integration with the Facebook Platform. Now, whenever you read or comment on an article on the Huffington Post, you can have that information shared with all your friends on Facebook! It's fascinating news and I think a demonstration of the type of integration we'll continue to see between social media sites and news sites into the future.
About the only thing missing was an overall framework that ties everything together... I'd like to think I've been working on such a framework and have presented it to multiple audiences (including on a radio show, a webinar and a conference presentation), but have never written about it, so here goes.
FOF Marketing Defined
I call the overall framework FOF Marketing... FOF standing for friend-of-friend, friend-of-fan or friend-of-follower.
The idea behind FOF Marketing is to put your online marketing focus on creating content that will be shared by the friends/fans/followers of your business with their friends/fans/followers.
If you're creating content and using tools that's focused on reaching your existing base, then you're likely creating dead-end content that's not helping your overall social media efforts. Instead of creating content that's meant to be "consumed", we really need to be thinking of creating content that's worth sharing... and then using the tools and technologies that make sharing your content easy.
FOF Marketing = Relevance
The main reason to be interested in FOF marketing is that it puts your online focus exactly where it should be... On attracting an extremely relevant audience.
Traditionally, the way to attract relevant traffic to your website was to improve how your site ranked in Google because Google's search algorithms is well tuned to send targeted traffic. However, the one audience that's often more relevant than Google's search engine are the existing friends and fans of your business. In other words, do you want to find people who are likely to be interested in local ventura county sports, then your best bet is to reach out to the friends of people who actively engage in Ventura County sports...FOF Marketing in Practice
As someone who loves to market businesses online, I've become enamored with the Facebook platform because they make good FOF marketing so easy. If you write a status update (could be text, a link, a video, a photo, etc.) and someone leaves a comment, or "likes" your update, then that information gets sent to their profile and is likely to be shared with their friends. In addition, if you're running a Facebook business page, and someone engages with on your business page, then Facebook will often help spread the word to their friends by recommending your page to their friends. This is the classic FOF Marketing in that people are sharing things with their friends/fans/followers by simply engaging with your content.
Interestingly, retweeting within Twitter can be a form of FOF Marketing in that it can really help you spread your content to the friends-of-followers (again, a ridiculously relevant audience for most businesses including newspapers!). The fact that retweeting is such a widely-used aspect of twitter makes it an extremely effective way to generate interest in your content should you be so lucky as to write updates that others find worth sharing with their followers!
I've been thinking about the concept of FOF Marketing for quite a while, but one of things that prompted me to create this post was the news today that the Huffington Post showed they get the power of FOF Marketing by creating a deep integration with the Facebook Platform. Now, whenever you read or comment on an article on the Huffington Post, you can have that information shared with all your friends on Facebook! It's fascinating news and I think a demonstration of the type of integration we'll continue to see between social media sites and news sites into the future.
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