It’s Not About Listening, It’s About the Green

Woman Plugging Her EarsI hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be blunt. Social media isn’t about listening. No one cares about listening. I wrote a post earlier where I said customers don’t care if brands are listening. It’s true, we don’t. You know who else doesn’t care about listening? The person who signs your paycheck. The head honcho, the big wig, the (wo)man upstairs. However you want to phrase it, the decision makers don’t care about listening. So why are you still using “listening” as a reason to invest in social media?

I’ve spent the past 5 years of my professional career on the corporate side of things. To make things worse, it’s been in the financial space (I know, we’re greedy bankers, we caused the crisis. I’ve been called a lot of bad names, don’t worry). So maybe it’s the “business” in me, but let’s face it, the only thing that matters…it’s green and hopefully in large denominations. Continue reading

Your Copy Sucks: That vs. Which vs. Wait, what?

close-up of cloth pouch with scrabble tilesJust admit it. ADMIT IT. You don’t know when to use “that” and when to use “which” in a sentence.

Don’t cry! Nobody does. Seriously, no one can remember the rules for that/which because they are so. Freakin’. Difficult to remember when you’re in the middle of writing. But some of you actually care about your writing, and for you, I will break it down. The rest of you can go, I don’t know, eat cheez doodles and watch the local news.

Here’s what the Chicago Manual of Style (praise be His name) has to say about that/which: Continue reading

Can Imperfection Sell?

Darts in bullseye of dartboard, front view, focus on bullseyeWhen I analyze advertisements, I give far less consideration to the product itself than I do to the lifestyle or ideal that it is selling. Take one of the recent Windex television spots, for example. Sure, the clean windows are nice, but I would venture a guess that many would rather purchase the lifestyle – children who rise out of bed when the sun shines and rocket towards the bus stop without prodding. The benefits that the creative implies one can receive from purchasing Windex are what sell in this spot.

That said, imagine my surprise when I read the recent Fast Company article, Why Brands Should Strive for Imperfection. Author Martin Lindstrom suggests that, since nothing is truly perfect, brands should stop selling perfection and sell imperfection – not manufactured imperfection, but true, everyday imperfection. Continue reading

Thoughts from SMPR: Part 2—Stepping Away from the Rainbow

Landscape view of a rainbow over green hills against stormy skyFollowing up on my post from last week about SMPR, I promised to go into a bit more detail about my second main point during that panel: It’s time we all step away from the social media rainbow just a tad and realize that many CEOs/C-levels don’t fully grasp the impact of social media. Therefore, we need to do a better job of helping them see a corrallary between getting a great placement in The New York Times and how many times that piece was retweeted, commented on or whatever the case may be.

The fact is, folks, many people will never get this, and we need to learn to be OK with that. In fact, we need to be better than OK with that; we need to help them understand why having blogger X tweet about our company is just as important in many cases as a write-up in Shoes Today. We need to put these great social media accomplishments that I know many of you are working hard to achieve each day into the context of what our executives know and understand. Continue reading

The Social Media Balancing Act

Businesspeople in a meetingAt least once a day my brain goes for the e-brake to prevent me from putting my foot in my mouth on Twitter. Honestly, who cares about the guy snoring/drooling on me during my commute? I also make a mental note to check Facebook on Sunday nights to see what pictures need untagging from the weekend. Trust me, they aren’t reminiscent of Girls Gone Wild but the pictures from the latest PRBreakfastClub karaoke night aren’t very flattering either. For the people who think I sound ridiculous I suggest you read Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck. In it he explains that our resume is much more than a piece of paper. Continue reading

From the Toy Fair Frontlines

Today we have a special guest cross-post from Stephanie Azzarone, founder and president of Child’s Play Communications.

This week marked the 107th American International Toy Fair, a major industry event held in New York City. I had the opportunity to moderate a panel there titled, Connecting With Moms In Social Media — Blogs, Twitter and Facebook, featuring toy companies and mom bloggers.

Speakers included Barb Rentschler (Chief Marketing Office, K’NEX),

Dell Monson (Senior Director of Marketing, Hidden City Games), Kimberly Coleman (Blogger, Mom in the City) and Melissa Chapman (Blogger, Real Moms Guide, Kids in the City, WCBS-TV).

What made this presentation successful was that it presented perspectives from marketers on the one hand and bloggers on the other. I thought I would share a few highlights here: Continue reading

The Future of Sales…Twitter

Salesman Making PitchIt’s very interesting to see the evolution of social media. From just networking with friends and looking at fun pictures, to conducting business and measuring interaction, social media has become the means of communication. The response time of a complaint or compliment on when someone is mentioned is astonishing. One time I mentioned, “Everytime Kate Perry E-mails me, I get excited for a split second thinking it was the singer, then it’s Vocus” and instantly Vocus responds “We’ll be sure to mention that to Kate!”

Its a great feeling having your voice heard, just recently I tweeted something negative about Cision, our best friend and worst enemy. I tweeted that Cision was going way too slowly and i’m sure I did a big “You Suck,” but I instantly got a response asking to do something to my brower to speed it up. Great customer service there. However, that is not the point of this post. Continue reading

Why so serious, social media?

Businessman sitting in an office and using a laptopThis post is a result of joking around on Teh Twitters with Josh Sternberg, who pointed out that social media, God bless it, has a tendency to get blown way, way out of proportion in terms of, well, everything. Of course there are some things that the deserve the hyperbole–you know, like the snowmaggedeon/snowpacolypse. But being the pragmatic, rational people we are, when we see people make overblown statements it just makes us wonder, “Hmm, what’s the real message behind this message?”

And looking at this from a post-modern perspective, we understand that everyone’s reality is different and there are different perspectives on any given topic, but relying on the snake-oil salesman approach will eventually catch up to you. Continue reading

When does holding companies accountable in SM turn to whiny, woe-is me annoyances?

I recently saw a tweet from someone who complained that Verizon had it out for them and that they’d have to wait until their contract was up to get a new phone when the one they had was dysfunctional. The next day, I saw a tweet complaining that a hotel didn’t let people walking on the street into the lobby when it was pouring rain outside.

Seems we’ve all discovered the customer service side of social media. Hundreds of companies are in the social media sphere now to not only spread the word proactively about their organizations, but also to do damage/crisis control with less than happy customers.

But when does legitimate customer dissatisfaction turn into a public twitter and blogosphere annoyance? Continue reading

We’re Not Over-Conferenced; We’re Better Served

Woman standing at podium, hands clasped, low angle viewAs social media becomes more and more popular there’s another issue that is a direct result of its growing popularity: more social media conferences. In Arik’s recent post, he discusses his views that our society may in fact be over-conferenced.

I think the thought itself is interesting, but I have to admit that my gut reaction to hearing that assertion is that it just isn’t true. I will admit, there are a lot of different conferences out there. Just take a look at Mashable’s most recent conference guide. Looking at that list, you’ll notice that there are oftentimes several conferences during the same time period. However, there are also a couple things you won’t see there: overlapping cities and subjects. Continue reading