Starbucks’ CEO invites us to create content he can amplify
Starbucks’ CEO, Howard Schultz took out a full page ad in the New York Times last Sunday. Except, it didn’t look like an ad.
Home Depot Should Build a Sturdier Foundation for Video Content
Many brands have been creating content and have an arsenal on various social media platforms. Those brands should now be looking to evolve that content or the platforms on which it resides to maximize the investment and realize its potential.
Bloggers and brands can build valuable relationships
Blogger and brand relationships can be tricky to navigate. Oftentimes brands choose to sample products and donate items to bloggers for feedback, reviews, exposure — only to find that nothing comes of it or that the response was not favorable. Bloggers want to remain editorially sound, which means that brands looking to crate meaningful relationships with bloggers need to have a definitive strategy and dedicated resources who are focused, disciplined, and track against concrete goals. Recently I’ve seen a few examples of how blogger and brand relationships have evolved and become more meaningful initiatives.
Is Impress.js Impressive Enough?
Impress.js lit up the Internet in early January. Early adopters and the geekiest of the geeks were sufficiently “impressed” with the creators ability to match its competition Prezi, feature-for-feature and add more. Impress.js is certainly impressive, but is it impressive enough?
Does NFC technology live up to its promise?
Near Field Communication (NFC) is the latest in technology for enabling commerce at retail through your cell phone. However, with the dependance on a human interaction at the register, is it a technology that currently saves time or provides the convenience it promises? Also, how robotic are we getting with our in-store customer service, and is the goal to eliminate human-to-human contact completely?
Is Tiffany’s micro-site better than Pinterest?
Pintrest.com is generating a lot of interest and has even been sited as a leading traffic generator to retail sites, surpassing Google+ and growing at leaps and bounds. If it is the new coveted platform for gathering images based around topics of interest, then why did Tiffany’s decide not to use it for their “What Makes True Love” campaign but rather relay on their own platform?
Do We Care about the McDonald’s Suppliers?
McDonald’s is running a campaign about their suppliers – potato, lettuce and beef so far. What is it about the McDonald’s campaign that seems so disingenuous?
Location-Based Introductions: Meeting your Connections’ Connections
There’s lot’s of talk about how brands can interact with their potential customers using Location-Based Services (LBS), but very little discussion about how individuals, especially in the B2B space can leverage LBS for interpersonal interaction that can lead to powerful introductions (especially at an industry event.) One service, Sonar.me (http://www.sonar.me), has helped me bridge that gap.
Wednesday Video: Todd Van Hoosear on ROI
Todd Van Hoosear, Principal at Fresh Ground Inc., discusses the importance of a community manager to ROI.
3 Reasons Financial Services Struggle with Social Media
With FINRA, SEC, legal concerns, and the slow pace of regulatory change, financial services companies like Fidelity Investments and Putnam Investments struggle to suss out their place online.
7 Ways Social Media Rewards The Brain
Tom Chatfield spoke last July at Ted about “7 Ways Games Reward the Brain.” While I watched Tom’s speech, I realized that Social Media has more in common with game theory than with content marketing. Here’s my take on his 7 rewarding concepts as applied to Social Media marketing.
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Wednesday Video: Making Content Relevant to your Audience
Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer for Tippingpoint Labs, answers the question: “How can I make my content more relevant to my target audience?”
Learned Lessons from SMB18
There is a glut of information on the internet; your goal should be to know, find, and share the best, whether that means producing new content or redistributing existing, high quality content.
Your Workforce is Your Social Media Policy
The democratization of knowledge is a real phenomenon — thanks to the internet. Your company should be playing on this field in a big way. You should be mining your entire workforce for content and promotion. Don’t close your employees off from social media, empower them to do social media right.
Iteration as Client Education
When you iterate with your development, you are actually helping your clients evolve and go with the flow, following the way the web actually works. Trying to perfect things leaves would leave them exposed and static in a moving tide. But iteration itself is a chance for education in the mindset they’ll need to compete in the new web atmosphere.
2010: Marketing is not Marketing
In the age of transparency, marketing is not about crafting artificial or half-true brand stories for consumer audiences. Marketing is about uncovering, fostering, sharing, and engaging with employees and consumers around the true stories that make your brand unique. Let’s take a look at how a few of the departments in your organization are the real marketing departments.
Metrics for Success: How Elevated is Your Valley?
If you’re launching a web-based promo campaign, success won’t be found in the traffic peaks, rather, the valleys. Holding the audience is where real value is generated.
Social Media Outreach is More Than Saying “I’m Sorry”
Qwest has a dedicated team at socialmedia.qwest.com — not at TalktoQwest.com where it should at least also be — whose mission, according to the CEO is “Listening to and understanding our customers so completely that we deliver a total customer experience that exceeds expectations.”
What does this crack team of social media experts do? They listen and understand.
Got Elevation?
Successful web content doesn’t promote your brand or product. It promotes the themes and subjects that surround them. It prompts discussion or adds to it.
Brian Solis’s Conversation Confusion Prism
Let me start by saying something very important. We like Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas’s The Conversation Prism. It provides a very comprehensive view of the web content distribution world. It was developed to address a number of issues that … Continued
3 Steps to Feeding the Beast
Social media sites are growing. Content is being created, and consumed, at an incredible rate. Attention spans are short, and if the beast doesn’t like what’s on offer, it will move on. Only the best content will be remembered. How do you give it what it wants?
Don’t Yell at a Crowd
Allow me to smack you upside your head with some Tuesday afternoon obvious: There are a lot of conversations happening on the internet. It’s all about participation … maybe You probably don’t need to be told about the importance of … Continued
Don’t Let This Odyssey Pass You By
The online discussion space is a consumer’s paradise and favors their influence over the producer’s. The only way to extract value from the endless conversation that is the internet is to openly and honestly interact with it.
Using Social Networks to Promote Your Content
If you’ve approached building your LinkedIn and Twitter networks wisely, they’re great channels for narrowcast promotion. You have an audience with an expressed interest in you and your content. Feed it to them.
Viralheat — OK To Monitor, But Not To Measure
Last month, we reported that social media metrics site Viralheat is in the Experimentation Phase of their New Media Life Cycle. Now let’s take a closer look at what Viralheat actually provides. Here’s a demo from the site: When you’ve … Continued
Podcast: Traveling Near and Far
This week on The Tipping Point podcast we strike out in a new direction and experiment with a new format. Traveling to Las Vegas with Andrew Davis, on vacation with Eric Sagalyn, and into the past with Jim Cosco. Featured: Zappos Headquarters; an interview with Eric Sagalyn on Twitter, WordPress, user experience, daddy blogging and more; and John Quincy Adams on Twitter (Readings by David Cutler from Eat Media and Jason Tarre)
5 Questions to Test Social Media Expertise
Ask these five questions as you consider working with any social media ‘expert’ — the answers will give you the necessary insight to judge any social media strategy.
Viralheat and the Search for the Holy Grail
For a comprehensive social media strategy, reporting back on the engagement can be as time consuming as creating the content. Viralheat attempts to create one interface for monitoring and quantifying your social media interactions.
Begetting the Love Child of Social Media and Custom Publishing
Today’s social media strategies are heavy on the social and light on the media. It’s mostly about getting on a site and getting followers. Or responding to every mention of your company. It’s only a fraction of the overall picture of what social media ought to be.
Hey Social Media Agencies — Alpo or Eukanuba? The Choice Is Yours.
Whether you’re a social media agency or not, your company should be producing content that reflects your goals and supports your claims. Period.
Social Media Experts Don’t Understand Social Media
It seems like every time I meet with an agency, they bring along their social media experts. I’m not exactly sure what makes someone a social media expert. Perhaps it is someone who knows how to amass a lot of … Continued
Add Value on Twitter: The 4-1-1 Rule
Today, we’re focusing neither on the value of Twitter nor what you can do with it. Instead, let’s take a look at how you should be using it for maxium efficiency.
As Twitter is in the escalation phase, you shouldn’t be spending a lot of time thinking about it or using it. You should only be spending 15% of your time marketing on all escalation-phase platforms combined.
MySpace Struggles in Monetization
While its days as the #1 destination of young people may never return, MySpace can still prove to be an outstanding and valuable web channel. This may entail a refocus of efforts away from the personal branding elements that they pioneered and on to the higher-quality content areas of their site.
Ning Might Outpace LinkedIn in Gestation Phase
Ning is a social networking site that is definitely learning a lot in the Gestation phase of its New Media Life Cycle, and perhaps its more moderate and measured growth demonstrates that it’s taking a long-term growth strategy that will ultimately prove to be more successful than LinkedIn.
Avoid the Black Hole of Foreverism
Foreverism gives the impression of being present equally in all times at once and lasting without decay in perpetuity. The former is impossible and the latter is contrary to reasonable expectations. It’s another way of saying, if you’re a marketer, never sleep.
Chris Brogan and Mike Lewis eBook Success
Successful content can propel brands to the forefont of an industy. To engage audiences meaningfully with content requires knowing them and giving them what they need and want. Case in Point: Chris Brogan and Mike Lewis achieved this kind of … Continued
Microsoft Bing: WTF Kind of Launch Was That?!
Microsoft has spent a reported $100 million to launch their new ‘decision engine’ Bing. I can appreciate their desire to go big with this product launch, but in the process they really dropped the ball on some great opportunities (and some alternatives). Yes, I am talking about the basics of content marketing.
Lifecasting: Can Ford Help Elevate Lifecasting?
Ford’s Fiesta Movement campaign demonstrates an excellent application of a comprehensive social media strategy involving multiple channels to market a product, but it’s the lifecasts that are really the standout in the campaign.
Fixing Newspapers Hinges on Changing News Gathering
What Newspapers are doing right and what they can do better. The reality is that newspaper’s daily hard copy is yesterday’s news, not what’s happening right now.
Finding Value at Omegle.com?
Omegle’s premise is simple: Click “Start a chat” and you’re immediately connected with a completely random person. No logins. No terms & conditions. No warnings. Just sink or swim. The living embodiment of Mama Gump’s take on life: It’s a box of chocolates and you don’t know what you’re gonna get.
Twitter is Done. Tumblr is Next.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve started to see evidence that Twitter might be entering its Trough of Disillusionment. The evidence you ask? A quick search on Google Trends for the phrase “Twitter Sucks” shows a HUGE spike starting … Continued
