Are you trying to embrace social media at bayonet point? Yes, you should absolutely broaden your social media efforts, and get more people from your company involved, and in more places. But, you should not do that at the expense of the secret ingredient of social media – Passion. Why do features and benefits-laden messages [...]
Can Social Media and Lead Generation Coalesce?
By now, we all know that social media is a fantastic tool for gauging the audience and communicating with previous and current customers. But, can it also be used to lure in new customers? Can social media marketing be paired with other lead generation tactics to create new business opportunities? My initial response was, ”mmh, [...]
Audit Your Intellectual Capital – 7 Ways to Find Your Stories
Guest post by Elizabeth Sosnow (@elizabethsosnow), Managing Director of BlissPR, a New York City based public relations firm. She develops and supervises strategic communications programs for major companies in professional and financial services, with a particular emphasis on the legal, consulting and insurance industries. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy slips on banana peel, [...]
Building Your Blog Community: It’s a Matter of W FACT
Are you building a community, or an audience? In the last couple weeks, I’ve had two experiences that really shook me up on the topic of community. First was Chris Brogan’s simple but devastatingly effective post about the difference between audience and community being the direction the chairs are facing. Second, was a conversation I [...]
Build Thought Leadership Through Social Networking
Remember, social media is about people, not logos. That’s why the most powerful form of social capital is personal, not corporate. That was the theme of my day-long workshop for the Association of Management Consulting Firms last week in New York. My friend and client Elizabeth Sosnow of BlissPR co-presented with me. Titled “You’re a [...]
Observations on Day 365
This week makes it one year since I started writing this blog, and I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thanks to every one of you that occupies even a minute of their increasingly precious time by reading Convince & Convert. The volume of high quality, free, online content (especially about marketing) [...]
CC Chapman – The Twitter 20 Interview on Telling Stories and Humanizing Brands
CC Chapman is a lot of desirable things. A legendary podcaster that embraced that medium from its very earliest days. A grizzled blogger, with entries dating back to 2001. A co-founder of the buzzlicious non-traditional marketing agency The Advance Guard. A devoted father that doesn’t let the digital tsunami swamp his boat. Between conference speaking [...]
8 Ingredients of Intoxicating Blog Posts
Is there a method to your blogging madness? Blogging isn’t new, but the notion of blog authorship contributing to marketing effectiveness is very much gaining favor in the U.S., resulting in a flood of new bloggers, especially B2B. Encouraged by inbound marketing proponents like Hubspot, Chris Brogan, Michael Gass, (and me), organizations are jumping on [...]
Why Blogs Will Kill Dissent
While newspapers and magazines make increasingly Draconian decisions to try to escape their inexorable spiral of decline, the very future of publishing comes into question. Will life as we know it stop once the Grey Lady and her sisters cease to exist in their historical form? No. Even without papers and mags, Britney will still [...]
Can Spam Survive in a Social Media World?
Guest post by Indra Gardiner (@bgindra), President of Bailey Gardiner in San Diego. An award-winning PR and marketing pro, she leads BG’s social media efforts and writes on their Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid Blog. There’s always someone who wants to ruin it for everyone else. Know what I mean? And in the world of social [...]