The Social Media GeekSocial Media Thought Leadership

We are seeing that the natural catalysts of ego and the relevance has launched companies worldwide into the space of social media in an unorganized fashion. What we are left with in many cases are a plethora of Facebook pages representing every facet of a company. I call this Socialrrhea, and is not limited to Facebook, but that is what we will tackle today. But before you go championing this article as a sign that the times are changing and that there is too much ’social’ in our media, let’s dive in and understand how we can strike a better balance. Continue reading →

Social media is finally making sense to you, your organization, or your clients—and while there seems to be this undeniable itch to jump in head-first you know full-well that the powers that be don’t care about your fancy social networks. With that firmly planted in the back of your mind, you are still rapidly piecing together your ideas, charts, and slides to go to bat for why social media is going to change the way you do business. But like any creative pitch, there is more to it than the medium; there is the nuances of the pitch mixed with the hostility that accompanies early adoption. So let’s ditch early adoption, in favor of early achievement.

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I have always been a fan of Foursquare. What they brought to social media was an exploration into location based social media—testing the waters as to the privacy boundaries, or lack there of, and all issues associated with check-in updates. The adoption rate has been fantastic for this emerging network, and with their ability to strike deals up with European characters Foursquare seemed to be on a roll. In addition the standing offer to be bought out for 100 million+, the writing was on the wall.

Enter Facebook So here we are, about to see Facebook jump into the location-game. Foursquare might have wanted to take that offer after all. They aren’t necessarily out of the game, but we could have seen this coming with the roll-out of a retail storefront sticker campaign that is being tested. Nonetheless, the Internet continues to mature, and I am excited to see it happen.

What does this mean for SMB and Retailers? Continue reading →

Social media has really been the hot topic this past year between my clients and my agency—there is a good chance that those of you reading this are still chomping at the bit to figure out how social media can make your weekly PowerPoint status-slide sing.

A couple of years ago, it seemed that I couldn’t get a marketing manager to even fathom the idea that Facebook had any amount of relevance to their target audiences. All things social media, even as recent as a couple of months ago, were vocalized to me as fringe and fleeting fads that the youth and their hippity-hop cultures waste-away on—not what sophisticated business people spend time reading.

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There has been an overwhelming amount of interest with regards to my post on Return on Interaction being the new ROI. Thank you all for your emails, and Tweets! With that said I felt it was only right to really set-the-stage about social media and a simple set of rules on how to start formulating your strategy. Think of this article as the technique section of social media from which you can start thinking about potential and desired ROI.

Below is a slide from my social media presentation to NASA.

Social Network Proper Usage

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List-erine

I’m not going to get into the ‘top ways’ to use Twitter lists. That topic is already the new hot thing to write about and it all sounds the same.

Simply put Twitter lists are great for organizations trying to promote their outreach efforts, but lacking for the ’social’ element Twitter hoped to accomplish. It chirps for Tweeps to befriend a list of friends, cooler than their own. Anecdotal thought: I will reference Gore, a company that has built itself on not having a group larger than 150 people for anything. They believe that anything beyond 150 people kills its effectiveness…keep this in mind for your communication pool.

Does this remind anyone of the check boxes that subscribe you to mass amounts of email lists when registering with various Websites on the internet? Anyways, for your humor I now unveil List-erine!

Some very interesting thoughts from Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. My takeaways were keep investing in social media and user generated content [duh] and pick up a Chinese phrase book.

The UFC has done a pretty great job of utilizing Dana White, the president of the organization, for all things promotions and personality. Dana White IS mixed martial arts to many fans, in that he embodies a straight-shooter attitude that so many fans are drawn to. On top of being good in front of the camera, and having an innate ability to handle media frenzies, White also can be listed as an early adopter for integrating social media into the core structure of his organization.

As far as Twitter celebrities go, White has the ratios, a constant stream of posts, and a personality that is enjoyable to follow. 690k Twitter followers is nothing to shake a stick at! Dana is also a YouTube sensation with his video blogs. His video blogs also give viewers a behind the scenes look at the UFC as a business. What this really does for the organization is enable it to shed too much harassment from dissenters just wanting to dog ‘the man’ for not being benevolent.

How so? Continue reading →

Poaching from soshable.com. Thanks for the awesome video link!