The Chicken and the Egg Social Media Conundrum

There are many ways social media differs from traditional marketing. It’s approachable and human. It’s a two-way dialog, rather than unilateral declarations. It treats the customer as a teammate, rather than a target.
But there’s another big difference. In social media, the audience comes after the message, not before.
Remember that when you buy a print [...]

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Should a Blog be Your Social Media Hub?

The divine corporate blogging expert Debbie Weil recently asked this question on her blog, as part of a Kindle version refresh of her excellent book “The Corporate Blogging Book.”
Debbie asked me to think about whether a blog should be the social media hub – your epicenter, the place where you’re trying to bring your customers [...]

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Attacking the Social Media Lynch Mob

Can we put down the pitchforks?
For most of the past year, there’s been a barrage of blog posts bemoaning the social media gold rush, and the number of self-proclaimed experts that seem to propagate like pink eye in a kindergarten class.
In fact, there was much hand-wringing a couple weeks ago when Mashable breathlessly announced that [...]

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Social Media Plus Sucking Equals Success

Sometimes being wrong feels so right.
Truth and candor are in short supply these days. Perhaps it’s always been this way, but it sure seems like there’s an awful lot of politicians, celebrities, and athletes that have been unmasked as liars and losers.
Soon we’ll have someone taking steroids while cavorting with hookers and debating [...]

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Trey Pennington – The Twitter 20 Interview About Social Media and Humanity

Dr. Trey Pennington has a full plate. He has an active consulting practice, a forthcoming book called “Spitball Marketing”, a blog, an online radio show (the must-listen “Social Media Professor“), and a Facebook page. He’s also founded several Social Media Clubs world-wide, and is active in a bunch of local and South Carolina organizations. (He’s [...]

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Don’t Lose Your Social Media Joy

Watching the mini-mites play hockey at today’s tournament in Durango, Colorado, it struck me that these kids play for the pure joy of it. They don’t care who wins, who scores goals, who gets to be goalie. They care about having fun, and what the post-game snack might be.
And as social media matures, I [...]

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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, 18-page tree [...]

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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, regardless [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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