Persuasive Picks for the Week of 06/28/09

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Jeff Glasson
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Top 10 Productivity Basics Explained
Every once in a while I like to include a non-social media, PR or marketing pick. This is one of those times. As a virtual worker, I continually find motivational inspiration in productivity-based posts. Here’s a nice basic one from LifeHacker.com.

Comment Marketing for Beginners
Shannon Paul applies a fun “red light, green light, yellow light” approach to the basics of “Comment Marketing.” Be sure to read (and contribute to) the comments for more insight.

HOW TO: Get Retweeted on Twitter
Pete Cashmore posts some interesting data (via Dan Zarrella) on re-tweets and re-tweet behavior. Good food for thought when using Twitter as part of your social strategy.

Timing Is A Critical Success Factor for Blog Posts
Michele Goetz expands on the importance of blog post timing and shares an example of how the great posts can fizzle out of the gate, but come back to life when the timing is right.

Buy Twitter Followers: 100,000 for $3479
It was only a matter of time. Once Twitter started to make a routine appearance on nightly news and mainstream media channels, the scammers and low-end profiteers started coming out of the woodwork. Got some extra cash laying around to buy followers who have absolutely no interest in what you have to say? Read on for pure comedy.

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Tags: blogging, comment marketing, Dan Zarrella, LifeHacker, Mashable, Michele Goetz, Persuasive Picks, Pete Cashmore, Shannon Paul, Twitter

Beating a Dead Social Media Horse

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Christine Perkett
Filed Under Social Media & Networking | Leave a Comment

I’ve been suffering a bit of blogger’s block lately – finding a motivational topic difficult to come by and even harder, something everyone’s not already talking about. So I reached out to my Twitter community and asked for ideas. I received some interesting feedback but one that caught me by surprise was from @Britrock, who suggested I write “about topics that are beaten to death and why the subject is so popular?”

So here I am and the subject is of course, social media. It’s absolutely beaten to death – yet unsolved – and it’s so popular because no one can quite agree on its definition, its impact, its value, its future or even its present. Not everyone is bought into the “concept” and even when businesses are, they are unsure who to trust – who really “gets it” from a business value perspective and understands that it’s more strategic than creating a Facebook fan page and some cool videos?

We do know that it’s currently the hot buzzword in business. Oh, and it’s supposedly killing off entire industries such as PR, advertising and traditional media.

Social media is such a broad term, subject to the individual definition of everyone who mentions it. Some people think it means digital production, others think it means blogger relations and currently, Wikipedia defines it as “online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.”

Businesses are trying to define its value, executives/celebrities/political figures are trying to understand how to use it, and “experts” galore are casting the FUD factor all over in hopes of capitalizing on the currently-hot trend. It’s talked about so much but in the end, I think it’s simple.

Social media is talking with – not at – those who matter to you, your brand, your business. It’s such a simple concept but it’s difficult for businesses to embrace because we’ve spent so many years just pushing messages out one way. Brands didn’t necessarily want to listen – they just wanted to dictate thought and influence opinions. Ad agencies would create sleek – and sometimes stupid – ads that people would mostly chat about the day after each year’s Super Bowl. If brands got lucky they’d hit a word-of-mouth winner like “Where’s the Beef” or “Aflac.” PR teams wrote press releases full of fluffy words that real people would never say, and no one really cared as long as it grabbed some attention and resulted in media coverage.

But now, things are different. With “social media,” consumers can not only post, dissect and analyze your words, they can create their own commercials about your product. They can write full blog posts about your press release and how silly it sounds and encourage others to create their own “fluffy words list” underneath it. They can create and promote “I hate your product” fan pages on Facebook and in just seconds, tell 25,000 people with 140 words how frustrated they are.

Or, how happy they are.

And here’s the thing – because they’re not actually trying to sell anything, they’re probably going to get more people to listen to them than a big brand standing on its own soap box. (Hence the illusion that PR and ad industries will suffer – rather, they will evolve – but that’s another blog post.) So what can you as a brand or a business do?

This brings me back to my definition of social media – talking with and not at. Clients very often come to us when something negative is said about them in a blog or on a social site like Twitter. Of course we analyze each instance but very often we encourage clients to engage with the naysayer – and this is a very difficult thing for businesses to get comfortable with. They don’t want to stir the pot or seem disingenuous. But when you have an issue with someone in your life, don’t you address the situation? Communicate? Discuss? That’s what social media is allowing us businesses to do in a way never before possible. You can fight or ignore it, or you can embrace and benefit from it.

Social media allows you to communicate directly with your customers and prospects. It gives you a platform to spark discussions that showcase your thought leadership or tell a customer story in a more visual and interactive way than ever before. It gives you a chance to share content among a community that you can see is relevant based on the discussions already taking place.

No, you can’t control it – but you can participate in, and positively influence, discussions. And if having happy customers tell others about you is valuable to you, (or showing prospects that you care about their opinion, or fixing a problem someone is having with your product, or lowering attrition, or showcasing your thought leadership, or winning a new client because they see so many other influencers engaging with you, etc.) then there’s your answer to social media ROI.

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Tags: advertising, big brands, business, Facebook, insurance, Marketing, mcdonalds, media is dying, PR, Social Media, Twitter, wendy's

Social CRM Rocks

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Christine Major
Filed Under Events, Social Media & Networking | 1 Comment

Chris Brogan Social CRM Rockstar You have to admit that we social media types really like to rock out. At the recent Rockstars of Social CRM event hosted by Chris Brogan and produced by Radian6, some of the “rockstars” of CRM were definitely in the house including Frank Eliason of @ComcastCares. What we learned, or I should say, what we were reminded of, is that customer service comes down to basics – connecting with your customers.

But now it’s called “Social CRM” which was defined by the Rock Star Panelists as a return to basics. The philosophy is good relationships = good sales.

This is not a new concept. Back in the days before Sprawlmarts, we had what some lovingly referred to as “The Mom and Pop shops” where the owner actually knew his customers and interacted with them personally. This resulted in customer loyalty and repeat business. My family has owned and operated its own party & novelty store, Ballard’s, for the past 30 years. My father still greets his customers and helps each and every one of them personally – you can’t get that at a big box store anymore.

While we are getting down to basics, the tools in which we use to do so are very different. Rather than that face-to-face interaction you might have received at a Mom and Pop shop, businesses are engaging in the same type of interaction, but using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to make those connections – no matter where their customers are. It has revolutionized the way in which companies do customer service, and if done right, is extremely powerful. Look at Zappos. They refer to themselves as a customer service company that sells footwear and clothing. Zappos is doing customer service right and leveraging online tools to do so. Any business, large or small can do the same.

What companies do you engage with whom you feel are doing it right? And, more importantly, what is your favorite Rock Band song to rock out to?

Cross-posted from http://www.christine-major.com

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Tags: Ballards, Chris Brogan, comcastcares, Events, Frank Eliason, Radian6, Social CRM, Zappos

Persuasive Picks for the week of 06/21/09

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Jeff Glasson
Filed Under Persuasive Picks | 1 Comment

Facebook Marketing for Dummies 5 Tips for Optimizing your Facebook Marketing
Facebook’s 200+ million users make it an increasingly attractive place to try some social marketing efforts. Paul Dunay of the Buzz Marketing for Technology blog shares five ways you can optimize those efforts.

The Forgotten Social Media Tool
With so many social networks and platforms to utilize these days, it’s easy to forget the countless bulletin board systems out there that still have incredibly active communities covering limitless niche topics. Robert Quigley brings bulletin boards back into perspective with this post on MediaBullsEye.

How to Use Social Media: An Interview with Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic
Guy Kawasaki shares this interesting interview (via Amex’s Open Forum blog) with Lee Aase of the Mayo Clinic on how they have been utilizing social media.

My Top 10 Sources of Content Inspiration
Being able to generate a continuous stream of content for blog posts comes naturally for some. For others, it can be a torturous process. Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch shares 10 places where he finds inspiration for writing a plethora of great content.

Report: Companies Should Organize For Social Media in a “Hub and Spoke” model
Many companies diving into the social media space are still trying to figure out what department actually “owns” social media. Should it be part of an existing internal group or is a re-organization in order? Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang shares three different models of company organization that can be found in his latest report.

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Tags: Duct Tape Marketing, Facebook, Forrester, Guy Kawasaki, inspiration, Jeremiah Owyang, John Jantsch, Lee Aase, May Clinic, MediaBullsEye, Open Forum blog, Paul Dunay, Robert Quiqley, social marketing

Persuasive Picks for the week of 06/14/09

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Jeff Glasson
Filed Under Persuasive Picks | 2 Comments

Building Your Online Brand: Five Basic Strategies
Diana Huff share five tips for building your brand online. It’s amazing how often many of these common sense strategies get overlooked.

Blogging Is Dying; Twitter Is to Blame
Crayonista, Joseph Jaffe shares an interesting perspective via MPDailyFix.com (cross-posted from JaffeJuice.com) on how Twitter might be causing blogs to fade away.

Search Engine Tools, useful resources
As I’ve mentioned in previous Picks posts, we need to continue to always teach the basics. Barry Hurd does just that by sharing a short list of useful (and free) search engine tools to use when doing keyword research.

15 Things Social Media Can Do for You Today
David Finch believes “We often get so engrossed in the ROI, measurements, and tools of social media that we forget real life examples of how social media can work.” To support that notion he shares 15 ways social media can help change the way you interact online.

Google Asks Common Man “What is a Browser?” Common Man Has No Clue [Video]
Adam Ostrow shares this entertaining “man on the street” video that demonstrates how little the general public knows about basic technology. It teaches a valuable lesson on how difficult it is to get people to adopt new technologies into their lives – something Google is currently facing with trying to get people to adopt the new Chrome browser.