(Originally posted on Off Madison Ave blog) Earlier this year, I received a FedEx envelope unexpectedly. It was from Infiniti (Nissan Motors USA). I purchased an Infiniti EX in late December, 2007. Turns out, according to the letter enclosed in the FedEx, the window sticker on my vehicle listed a “rollover sensor” as standard equipment. [...]
Video Blog Post – 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media
My first video blog. Apologies for the audio quality. I’ll work on that for next time. Comments most welcomed on this first effort. Thanks as always, j Download the sins as a PDF>>
9 Ways to Humanize Your Brand (with real humans)
Many companies are reluctant to fully dive in to social media, either because they are afraid of losing control, or because they believe their customers aren’t using social media. The latter is especially prevalent among B2B companies, and when viewed from a purely numerical perspective they may be right. (photo by The Dana Files) An [...]
Jason Falls – The Twitter 20 Interview about Social Media and Public Relations
Featuring Jason Falls, the head of social media at branding agency Doe-Anderson, author of the Social Media Explorer blog, and all-around social media nice guy genius. Jason submitted himself to the rigors of the Twitter 20 interview (20 questions live on Twitter) on November 14, 2008. Excellent questions and comments from viewers throughout, too. Thanks to [...]
My Mom Thinks Chris Brogan Plays Hockey
I saw my mom the other day. She’s a pretty hip lady for 64. She was a high school teacher for about 30 years, and was always a student fave. Stylish. Knew the music. Knew the scene. Thought Patrick Swayze was hot. Now, in her semi-retirement, she’s the editor for an online-only newspaper. She takes [...]
The Paradox of Social Media Control
As discussed recently in “Why Are We So Scared of Our Customers?” and “Presto, How Social Media Makes Bad News Good” I’m seeing the fear of negativity preventing more companies from embracing social media. The typical social media objection is that if the company has a conversation with consumers in a public forum, the company [...]
3 Reasons the Recession is Great News for Social Media
This recession is looking worse than Sylvester Stallone all roided up for that recent Rambo 14 (Rambo goes to the buffet for the Early Bird Special with some pals) movie. It’s going to be bad. But for social media, it just might be the best possible circumstance. Here’s why: 1. Smart Buying Consumer confidence is [...]
Why Are We So Scared of Our Customers?
Many companies and even agencies are reluctant to engage in social media because they are afraid that some sort of consumer backlash will occur, doing damage to the brand. Certainly, there are a few noteworthy examples of social media missteps from brands like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola et al. But in most cases, those shortcomings were due [...]
Presto! How Social Media Makes Bad News Good
In corporate conference rooms, a major complaint about social media is that it forces companies to get involved with dissatisfied customers in a public forum. The historic imperative has been to ignore complaints publicly, and deal with them privately via form letters and an occasional telephone call from a customer service representative. The rule of [...]
Email Unsubscribes – Embrace Those Who Reject You
A long-standing “success metric” in email marketing is the unsubscribe ratio. Like telling children that their pet fish is “just sleeping” the “unsubscribe ratio” is a euphemism. Your unsubscribe ratio is the percentage of people who receive your email that have gotten so tired or frustrated with your program that they simply can’t take it [...]
