Get More Bait in the Water
How can you catch more fish? By using more poles. If you’re going to create social media content to establish or perpetuate thought leadership for you, your company, or your clients, you can’t silo your ideas. The old method of thought leadership was to create a white paper. A carefully crafted, highly edited, incredibly boring, […]
How to Balance Your Personal and Professional Lives in Social Media
Does social media make you more comfortable, or less comfortable? For me, it’s both. As my friend Amber Naslund said when I interviewed her on Twitter, social media enables her to have friends that are not dictated by geography or circumstance. And to me, the ability to find people with whom you have a kinship, […]
Crushing the Myth of B2B Social Media
In nearly every speech or Webinar I conduct, someone in the audience asks “But all this social media stuff doesn’t apply to B2B right?” Yes, social media applies to B2B. In fact, social media can be MORE transformative for a B2B company than a B2C company. This is because B2B has a smaller potential customer […]
Trident Integrates Social Media with Print Ads
I promised you a couple weeks ago that in 2010 I would focus on social media integration and real business. Well, I’m starting a little early. Trident has released a new gum called Trident layers, which appears to be some sort of neapolitan ice cream-type multi-flavor concoction. (Personally, I’m okay with my gum tasting like […]
5 Sure-Fire Ways to Operationalize Social Media
This post was written originally for Valeria Maltoni’s excellent new ebook about marketing in 2010. It includes terrific, thoughtful insights from Shannon Paul, Olivier Blanchard, Danny Brown, Amber Naslund, Jackie Huba, Gavin Heaton, Mark Earls, Rachel Happe, Jonathan MacDonald, and of course Valeria herself. Download it for free right here. Change Is At Hand Marketing […]
Does Your Corporate Blog Measure Up
There’s a fair amount of agreement on principles on an effective blog, and even widespread head nodding regarding what success metrics are important. However, there’s very little available with regard to blog metrics benchmarking, and how your blog compares to others. I’m hoping to change that. And you can help by taking this short survey. […]
The Colossal Ultimate List of 2010 Social Media Predictions
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s social media. Do you feel like the world is shifting under your feet? I know I do. Marketing, communications, and customer service are changing and morphing like Joan Rivers’ face, and social media is the most-frequent agent of that change. Guessing what’s next in social media is everyone’s […]
A Pinch of Social Media Makes a Helluva Broth
Guest post by Scott Severson (@scottseverson), President of ARAnet, Inc. in Minneapolis. He is widely published on the subject of digital marketing, and has been a driving force in the development of Adfusion, an article-based advertising solution that utilizes a two-click model to drive qualified and motivated consumers to its clients’ Web destinations. Do you […]
Dan Zarrella – The Twitter 20 Interview About Viral Marketing
In an era where much of the information and resources about social media is of the squishy “care about your customer and converse with them” variety, Dan Zarrella is an incredibly important counter-balance. Social media is online. That makes it measurable. And trackable. And testable. Through his excellent blog, his work at Hubspot, and now […]
Social Media is a Samaritan, not a Savior
The problem with a lot of traditional marketing is that the call to action is too heavy-handed. “Visit your Toyota dealer now” or “Call this toll-free number” or “McRib is back, but only for a limited time.” Each of these forces the recipient of the message – the consumer – to make a yes/no decision. […]
What Brett Favre Can Teach You About Social Media Strategy
I went to the Arizona Cardinals vs. Minnesota Vikings game last Sunday. In addition to pitting two strong NFC teams against one another, the game included an interesting milestone – Brett Favre’s NFL record-tying 283rd consecutive game. 283 NFL games. In a row. Except for sleep and breathe, I’ve never done anything 283 times in […]
The Death of Sexy – Social Media, Integration and Real Business
Maybe we’ve gotten a little ahead of ourselves? In our zeal for YouTube videos, and Facebook apps, and iphone wizardry, and augmented reality we’ve in many cases neglected the many ways we can socially enable the marketing we’ve been doing all along. Sure it’s exciting to play with all the shiny new social media toys […]
A Twitter Spy Without the Russian Accent
Brands looking to generate social media ROI are moving inexorably toward one of two poles: either the social CRM approach whereby the customer service benefits of social media are emphasized; or the social media marketing approach, where the focus is squarely on selling stuff. If your focus is on selling via social media, it’s imperative […]
CrowdCampaign Makes Crowd Sourcing Simple
The denizens of Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social Web are a sharp group, generally speaking. You can learn a lot about yourself, your brand, and your products and services by listening to the desires of your fans and your community. I crowd sourced my facial hair, and kept my beard. Del Monte […]
Diane Hessan – The Twitter 20 Interview About Brand Communities
Diane Hessan knows the wisdom of crowds first-hand. As the CEO of Communispace, a fast-growing major player in the brand community creation and management industry, she’s helped drive consumer insight and product innovation for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. Co-author of the book Customer Centered Growth, Diane was recently named Entrepreneur of the Year by […]