It’s Monday morning. You grab your coffee, sit down at your desk and flip through a few articles before you dive into the tasks ahead. As you skim your New York Times, your Wall Street Journal, your PRDaily, Mashable and the like, it catches your eye. The holy grail of Monday. The article you absolutely, positively have to tweet.
You login to your management console and along the way the phone rings, emails multiply, crises erupt and your Monday morning is gone before you know. And the article remains untweeted. You call it quits and hope for a better Tuesday, one where you can tweet that beloved article that you are certain your followers will love. Continue reading →
Some of you may have noticed that my Twitter stream isn’t as robust these days. There aren’t as many blog posts, news articles and conversations flowing. To be rather blunt, I simply haven’t felt like tweeting. I’ve snuck onto the web occasionally and opened the TweetDeck a couple of times, but the ‘new tweet’ alerts haven’t been as alluring. Some days, I’ve felt self-imposed pressure to tweet, as though I wasn’t living up to expectations. Other days, I’ve felt like the site of that demonic little black and red alert box blocking the ability to close documents was more than I could take.
While the motives for my lack of tweeting are a bit unclear, even to me, and I really have no clue where I would have found the time to tweet more than I have been, I’ve learned some really important lessons while tweeting less. Lessons that I will carry with me if/when I decided to start bombarding your Twitter stream again. Continue reading →
It’s evident that social media is a hugely successful endeavor for many brands and companies, while others may as well not have entered the SM sphere. After seeing the disparity in results first-hand, I started thinking about what makes the difference, aside from the obvious differences in levels of engagement, nature of content, audience and relationship building measures. That led me to start thinking about how bakeries use social media (shocking, I know.) There I found the big difference – sampling.
When you have the opportunity to bait consumers to take their SM love for your company or brand and establish a real life relationship, you are golden. It seems elementary, but sampling is a great way to distinguish oneself from the competition and generate monetized ROI on your SM investment. Continue reading →
. . .billboards, that is. They dominate Times Square and distract drivers across the U.S. There’s no denying that these brightly lit, monster-size ads are hard to miss. But are they effective?
Personally, I’m just not a fan. Perhaps it’s my natural aversion to anything bold and glitzy. Or that I’m a fan of content that you can consume on your own time and terms, i.e. not just when in Times Square or driving down the interstate.
The cause of my digital distaste aside, I wonder if digital billboards are really worth the space. Is it worth thousands of dollars to attempt to snag drivers’ attention as they zip by at speeds in excess of 65mph? Continue reading →
With college graduations fast approaching, I’ve found myself fortunate enough to be on the speaking circuit. Visiting a few college classes and clubs to impart (hopefully) some wisdom about working in PR, manage entry level career expectations and, when possible, offer some guidance for the job hunt. Among the endless string of seemingly trivial and questionably relevant content offered, has been the following platitude: You have five seconds to make a first impression. Continue reading →
I recently reached a breaking point with my desk where I was physically unable to continue working. Everything I touched hit something else and caused a landslide. I couldn’t see the desktop through the clutter. Not to mention the fact that my stupid. . .errrr. . .bountiful. . .lush. . .plant was shedding everywhere!
I called a ‘time out’ shut my TweetDeck, minimized my Outlook and began the seemingly arduous process of cleaning my desk. Not surprisingly, there were a few documents to be trashed and a couple of publications to pass along to the next reader. However, I was a bit stunned to find the largest clutter monster was the heap of articles, blog posts and news clippings that had peaked my interest, been deemed ‘must reads,’ and sunk to the bottom of the pile. As I collected the articles into a folder and took them to read that evening, I came home to an even greater surprise – Continue reading →
It’s a common, and possibly over-analyzed, topic. One that has been discussed at nearly every social media conference I have attended. Yet, I’m going to broach the topic again. Should you engage in social media?
Instead of debating the pros and cons of engaging in social media, I’m going to take a slight detour. If you can’t or aren’t willing to engage, you at least need to monitor.
I think one of the largest misconceptions among organizations not involved in social media is that, if they don’t have a social media presence, nobody is talking about them. Continue reading →
Even though I know better than to wonder why my follower count is what it is, and I’ve come to let it rise and fall on its own accord, I couldn’t help but be a bit irked by its vacillation between 699 and 700 multiple times over the course of just one afternoon. Was it something I tweeted? Something I hadn’t tweeted? In the end who knows and who cares. That said, it’s still fairly annoying, especially to someone who dislikes odd numbers.
My own ridiculousness aside (yes, Cog, I did read and do recall your post about Twitter 101 and getting over the importance of the follower count. And, yes, I do agree that Mack Collier’s recent post ‘The Fast Food Approach to Social Media’ said all that needs to be said about counting your followers) there must be an art to the unfollow. I’ve done it on occasion, mostly to correct what I consider to be an error or my early days – following celebs. I’m not talking one or two, I’m talking dozens. Continue reading →
If social media has taught us anything, it’s that describing platforms and apps as being ‘of the moment’ and ‘the next big thing’ are as common as having a Facebook profile. While I am typically intrigued to hear about the new and better that lay around the corner, my threshold for the teasing and waiting are minimal at best. Consequently, the announcement of Twitter’s Anywhere left me looking everywhere on the web for details that were to be found nowhere.
A succinct post on Twitter’s blog offered minimal insight. Focused heavily on the conceptual aspects of the new open platform and walking readers through the rationale behind it, I was craving the when (not just a ‘mid April,’ but a March 27th at 10:01:35a.m. EST level of detail) and wanting the answer to be ‘now.’ Continue reading →
As you leave the office and breeze through your post-workday errands you check prices, scan the purchasing list to be sure nothing is missed and, of course, you check in at your chosen bottle of Kraft dressing or package of Gillette razors. Makes perfect sense, right?
Geolocation is a growing trend with many checking into their offices, residences and local haunts on platforms such as FourSquare, Gowalla and Loopt. But checking into your favorite product is a bit different. Unique? Yes. A bit much to digest? Yes. The next wave of geolocation? Undoubtedly. Continue reading →
It’s Monday morning. You grab your coffee, sit down at your desk and flip through a few articles before you dive into the tasks ahead. As you skim your New York Times, your Wall Street Journal, your PRDaily, Mashable and the like, it catches your eye. The holy grail of Monday. The article you absolutely, positively have to tweet.
