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Why Being Nimble Was the Key to Success for This Social Media Strategist

Posted Under: Social Pros Podcast
Hosted By
Jay Baer

Daniel Lemin

Convince & Convert
Jay Baer

Hannah Tooker

LaneTerralever
Jay Baer

Leanna Pham

Convince & Convert
About Social Pros Podcast:

Social Pros is one of the longest-running marketing podcasts in existence (10 YEARS and counting), and was recently recognized as the #1 Audio/Podcast Series by the Content Marketing Awards.

Our purpose? Making sure that we speak to real people doing real work in social media.

Listeners get inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how teams at companies like Google, Reddit, Glossier, Zillow, Lyft, Marvel, and dozens more, staff, operate, and measure their social media programs.  With 600+ episodes, the Social Pros Podcast brings the humanity of social media to the forefront, while providing incredibly useful marketing strategies that listeners can immediately implement.

Follow Social Pros on LinkedIn.

To inquire about becoming a guest or show sponsor, please email our Executive Producer, Leanna Pham, at leanna@convinceandconvert.com.

Apple Podcast Reviews:

The Social Pros podcast has quickly become a favorite in my feed! I'm consistently impressed by the engaging conversations, insightful content, and actionable ideas. I truly learn something every time I listen!

@Arlie K

This is absolutely an awesome listen for anyone in communications or social media!!

@Will31C

This podcast has become one of my staple weekly podcasts for learning about marketing! Love the conversations that they have and it's always enjoyable and educational!

@Simonstone95

Love the podcast - informative, in depth and spot on for any business size.

@MissTriathlon

Nick Cicero, Director of Client Strategy at Expion and co-host of the Social Pros Podcast, joins us today to discuss his experience onboarding new clients and training current ones, the power of long-term partnerships, his experiences working in countless industries, and what big businesses need to remember to succeed in social media.

An Interesting Social Start

2921_521694553473_8330403_nNick Cicero has always been a musician. Since the age of six, he’s played the trumpet and went to college to pursue his jazz trumpet career. Because he was entering higher education around the same time that the internet was taking off along with many high-level desktop applications, he began composing music commercially for media companies, brands, and individuals. He quickly learned how to operate the tools through online forums and other social media.
Soon enough, he realized that it was perhaps the marketing side, not the music side, that was attractive to him, and his grad school experience at Syracuse led him to working with several different agencies on the strategy and execution side of marketing campaigns. He is very fortunate to have worked with a wide variety of people – from musicians and entertainers to NFL players and superstars like Oprah Winfrey. These experiences have not only given him the insight and confidence to serve his clients, but they have also been extremely rewarding on a personal level. He loves to help the people around him.

It’s the People, Not the Software, That Make the Service

Something we don’t always talk about on the Social Pros Podcast is the importance of people, both in the service-based and product-based business. Because Nick is a consultant and strategist at a software company, he often helps his clients with issues that are directly tied to Expion’s social media management software. But he also helps them with general day-to-day problems that don’t always directly relate to the software.
This is so important in the marketing world, because the digital landscape is always changing. It’s important for Expion’s clients to feel comfortable with their strategy overall, and that’s what Nick and other account managers are there for – whether it be a recommendation on a new tool or a shoulder to cry on.

Nimbleness is Crucial to Success

Nick’s experience with large enterprise companies has taught him a lot about the strengths and weaknesses that large businesses often have. Given the rapidly changing nature of the digital marketing environment, being a big company cannot stop you from being flexible. You must have the capacity to adjust your strategy on a moment’s notice if that’s what’s best for your brand.
There are a lot of opportunities for businesses to respond to their customers and make changes to do what matters to them, and companies are getting better at this, Nick says. However, it’s difficult for larger and older companies to adopt this faster pace.

Social Media Number of the Week: 700,000

The number 700,000 sounded familiar to us because it’s been all over the social media news, and people are stirring up quite a fit over it. 700,000 is the number of people who were involved in the recently uncovered Facebook experiments. You can read all about the controversy here, but in short, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of 700,000 people to see if what they saw in their news feed could alter their emotional state.
Whether or not the experiments were legal is not as big of an issue as the trust component that Facebook is messing with. I believe that it won’t be technology meltdowns or competitors that kill Facebook (if it ever does die) – it will be a lack of trust among users due to ongoing “experiments” and other issues just like this one.

Holy Social

Wendy’s is at it again with their famous pretzel buns, only this year they’ve enlisted the 90s sensation Boys II Men to win the hearts of Wendy’s lovers all over the world.
In an effort to claim the Millennial nostalgia for the group, Boys II Men will be singing lyrics based on social media messages that fans send about Wendy’s. The group also performed in Times Square this week as a supplement to the larger marketing campaign.
Nick personally loves the intersection of music and marketing, so this was a natural choice for this week’s Holy Social. But it’s interesting to watch how brands are having more and more fun finding creative ways to activate fans, not just with their own products and services, but with people and ideas that complement their target audiences.
Nick and Jeff will work on getting Boys II Men to sing a tweet about Social Pros. That, or Jeff will simply sing it in his telltale radio DJ voice, since he’s basically the Robert Goulet of Social Pros.


See you next week!

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