9 Social Media Hacks I Use Every Day
Do you have your copy of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype? Visit Amazon or Barnes & Noble to get your copy now! Social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s just different expensive. To do it well requires a tremendous time commitment, and regardless of what your life and lifestyle entails, the time you […]
Agencies: Walk Your Talk
Marjorie Clayman is the resident blogger at www.margieclayman.com. She works at Clayman Advertising, Inc., her family-owned full-service marketing firm. Recently, Jay wrote a post here called The Only 4 Reasons agencies Should Care About Their Own Content. In addition to making me think about the specific content marketing angle, Jay’s post brought to mind what may be a key […]
Social Business Is About Actions Not Words
Update: Southwest wrote about this blog post in their in-flight magazine a couple months later. Cool! I cried a little on a plane last week. It wasn’t due to a delay, an uncomfortable seat, or peanut salt getting in my eye. It was because I saw a shining example of “social business” at work in […]
Why Social Media Has Ruined Your Advantage
Yesterday, I wrote about real-time information and the death of news cycles. This of course creates considerable challenges for business, which typically is not yet architected for real-time communication (at least not in public). Speed matters. Requiring someone to pull off to the side in your drive-thru lane like a vehicular leper because you didn’t […]
5 Steps to Launch Your International Social Media
Guest post by Christian Arno, founder of professional translation services provider Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 has clients in over sixty countries, and translated over forty million words in the last year. Even though Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google are American companies, social media doesn’t begin and end at the shores of the USA. If […]
It’s About Response, Not Engagement
Guest post by Jeff Molander, Author of the new book, Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You and adjunct professor, Loyola University Business School. He blogs at http://www.makesocialsell.com/blog/. We’re all listening, engaging, sharing, posting, updating. But with what business outcome in mind? When we say engagement, might we really […]
Social Media Lessons From the Offline Real World
An interesting report released from Pew Internet Research about the use of location-based services among adults found that only 28% of American adult cell phone owners use services such as maps or recommendations based on their location. In addition, 4% of all American adults use check-in apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Conversely, in the social […]
Social Media Success is About the Wizard, Not the Wand
Thoughtful research genius Tom Webster wrote an interesting post a couple weeks ago about where the location-based business could head, moving beyond the momentary check-in toward more nuanced and relevant customer interactions, using location data as the raw materials. His example was his local watering hole, where he figures by the time he’s checked in […]
Why Critics of Klout Are Missing the Big Picture
Other than signing book deals, the favorite sport of the social media punditry these days seems to be bashing Klout. The pugilists are plentiful, and appear to be trying to win a merit badge for dismissiveness. The most recent example was from B2B social media thinker Paul Gillin who wrote a post unveiling the flaws […]
New Research Finds the Curation vs Creation Sweet Spot
Whether you’re on a first date, meeting new people at a dinner party, or making it rain on Twitter, it’s just not a good idea to go on and on about yourself. It’s just awkward. Conventional social media marketing wisdom suggests that brands should avoid being overly self-promotional. Thus, brands seek to “be a part […]
Nobody Said Social Media Should Be Simple
Simple isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Social media is unique in that it is the only medium yet conceived where companies are playing in the exact same sandbox as we’re playing personally. Your employees and customers aren’t making TV ads on the weekend. Nor are they making their own magazine ads for fun […]
Accelerate the Convergence of Social, Search, and Content
This is my video interview with Arnie Kuenn about his excellent new book Accelerate. It’s a playbook for integrating your social media, search, and content marketing. I wrote the forward for the book. Video production, editing, titling by my friends at Candidio. If you need your raw video footage tidied up good, fast, reasonably priced, […]
5 Reasons Social Media Measurement is Making You Lie to Yourself
Social media measurement causes unsavory (and ineffective) marketing behavior because unlike the rest of our marketing key performance indicators, social media metrics are out there for anyone to see. Was it a surprise last week when Presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich was (allegedly) busted for having 1.3 million followers on Twitter, most of which were bots […]
Did This National Restaurant Chain Put Too Much Love Into the Like?
I’m glad that more and more companies are putting significant effort into their social media programs. Really, I am. But, we can’t let enthusiasm obfuscate reality, and that seems to be occurring with alarming regularity these days in all corners of the social Web. The most recent example to cross my inbox is from restaurant […]
Clowns, Charlatans, and Social Media Name Calling
There’s a lot of name-calling in social media right now, including Gary Vaynerchuk asserting that “99.5% of social media experts are clowns.” True, there are people out there (including many “name brand” social media consultants) that don’t have a lot of business expertise. This often results in companies getting too enthusiastic about social media per […]
A Hammer Isn’t a House – Don’t Confuse Tools with Metrics
Last week I spoke about The NOW Revolution at a dinner for 50 or so social media and email marketers, all employed by major corporations based in NYC. It was a great time. Steaks were eaten. Wine drank. Books signed. Interesting conversation participated in. What struck me most, however, was a chat I had with […]