Month: May 2011

The Importance of Brand Humility

Even if you are absolutely certain that your product/service is one of the best on the market, what you think of your brand is not nearly as important as what your consumers think of it and say about it.  They are, after all, the market!

“Brand humility is the only response to a fast-changing and competitive marketplace. The humble brand understands that it needs to re-earn attention, re-earn loyalty and reconnect with its audience as if every day is the first day.” – Seth Godin (in a recent blog post)

In my opinion, Seth’s message is right on target.  Brands simply cannot compete in this marketplace if they don’t make an ongoing effort to put aside ego-driven campaigns in order to genuinely engage with their consumers and potential consumers.  Relationships require humility, whether it’s personal relationships, business relationships, or brand/consumer relationships.

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Is Twitter for everybody?

This is the question that eventually gets asked by every person and every company trying Twitter for the first time.  In the height of your initial frustrations, you may be wondering … is Twitter really for me?

Most social media hype-masters will tell you “yes.”   Indeed, there is probably some business use or benefit you could discover for everyone and every organization.

But after working with hundreds of students and professionals across diverse businesses, I’ve come to realize the answer is no — it’s not for everyone.

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A Conversation about 2011 – 2012 Trends in Social Media

While attending LeWeb in Paris, I caught up with the 99Faces crew to discuss trends in social media for 2011 and 2012.

Among the many topics we touch, we spent a fair amount of time exploring the evolving influence of social media on…

  • Mainstream lifestyle and culture
  • The rise of curation
  • Elevating the importance of transparency and engagement between businesses and customers
  • Businesses dynamics and the need to open the doors between silos
  • Politics and organizing the “brilliance” of the crowds

I hope you enjoy the discussion!


Brian Solis at LeWeb about Trends in Social Media 2011 from 99FACES.

Brian Solis



Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

The New Normal of Work Includes Social Media

Read enough about productivity on the internet – especially in social media circles – and you’ll undoubtedly find counsel to cut down on “distractions” like Facebook and Twitter, or to stem content creation in favor of doing the “real work”.

The Real Work Thing

Ostensibly, this Real Work of which we speak (and I’m sure I’ve probably said something like that myself) is about doing the things that are concrete, tangible, and most likely relative to a day job or whatever work pays the bills. For me, it would be work that’s pertinent to my day job as VP of social strategy for Radian6. For you, it might be dealing with clients as a PR exec, or managing your team, designing websites, or any number of things.

In short, it’s the stuff that you’re supposed to be able to point to and see some kind of “real” result that moves your business or other goals forward. By whose standards we’re judging “real” I’m not quite sure. But there’s something very important to remember.

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Recommendations Are the New Advertising

Visa gets it – that the marketing world has changed significantly, and even the big players need to change along with it.  In fact, Visa’s head of marketing, Antonio Lucia, reported that Visa has increased their digital media investment from about 11% to at least 36%.

But Visa not just putting their money into digital media, they are also changing their approach to marketing.  Lucia said last month in his keynote at ad:tech San Francisco that Visa is now guided by three principles of social media, with one of them being “recommendations are the new advertising.”

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Are you a Social CMO? Introducing The Social CMO Survey for 2011!

For our 400th post on the Social CMO blog, we thought it was important to share something new and momentous with all of you!

With this in mind we are today introducing The Social CMO Survey and hope to get input and feedback from all you Social CMOs and aspiring Social CMOs out there! Take The Social CMO Survey!

The results of this survey will give us a better handle on where chief marketers and senior marketing managers are at today with Social Media and most importantly where they are going.

At the same time, these responses will allow us to develop a better picture of current CMO personas, how these are evolving and where they are headed as we continue to move forward into a social digital marketing future.

So what are you waiting for, take a few minutes and contribute to this important research! Every qualified participant properly completing the survey will be sent a summary report of the results once they are tabulated.

Here’s the link to The Social CMO Survey and we look forward to the responses from all you Social CMOs out there!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

How a City let Big Media Tell its Story: Lessons learned from #Memflood

Memphis in all the big media headlines this week took our community by surprise reporting the historic flood of 2011 and showing the absolute worst pictures and images of a flood that has impacted just 1% of our City. Now I will say right here that this post is not meant to be insensitve to those who are affected.  I am writing this from a public relations perspective and from my own personal observations and experience dealing with media and crisis management.  I think we (our whole community) underestimated the power of the national media and their ability to portray things differently than they happened. 

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Joining Collective Bias as Chief Social Marketing Officer…

I’ve been working in digital marketing since 1997, and each year I believe more strongly in the power of relationships for effectively connecting brands with consumers.   Back then, I never could have imagined the incredible connection-building possibilities provided by social media, but I am enjoying witnessing the world-wide adoption of social media as a viable business tool!   There’s no place I’d rather be than in the middle of this shift, and am pleased to have the opportunity to share my expertise with and learn from the team at Collective Bias as their Chief Social Marketing Officer. This is very exciting and something John Andrews, the founder of Collective Bias, and I have talked about for a long time.

I love the blogging community because when it comes down to it, they genuinely want to share useful information, and to connect people to information and products.   That really hit home for me when I was CMO of e.l.f. Cosmetics (Eyes Lips Face) from 2008-2010.  I pioneered a program to develop and utilize blogger relationships to exponentially increase and sustain the e.l.f. brand visibility, and because of the blogger energy, talent, and networks,  the program at e.l.f. brand evolved and succeeded with a unique approach toward not just beauty, but also accessibility, interactivity and consumer engagement.   At that time, the jury was still out on the business value of social media, but the success of this program confirmed for e.l.f. (and other previously skeptical businesses), that building relationships with consumers not only enhances the long-term viability of the brand, but has a direct short-term effect on the bottom line.

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Empowerment and Immersive Analysis: A Review of Brian Solis’s Engage

New media evangelist and influential thoughtleader, Brian Solis, gives a thorough breakdown of the social media landscape in his revised edition of Engage.

The book’s approach to helping others understand, and effectively apply, social media tools is rooted in the brand marketer’s point of view. Accounting for varied levels of new media expertise, Solis extensively covers all the bases in the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY AND HOWs of your brand’s social media efforts.

Dubbed “The New Media University,” the first half of the book details the various platforms and trends and that make up the Social Web. For Solis, we are continually students of new media, in a field that never stays the same for long. More suitable for those with little experience with social media for brands, readers will find that this half of the book serves as a good overview of the landscape, citing examples of companies that are effectively utilizing these various platforms.

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Blame It on the Youth

If you want to know where the future is headed, sometimes telling clues reside in how the youth of the world interact and share with one another.

With the rise of the Golden Triangle of technology, mobile, social, and real-time, technology is not just for the geeks, technology is part of our lifestyle…it is part of who we are. However, as we are all coming to learn, it’s not in what we have, it’s in how we use it that says everything about us.  In the way we use technology, whether it’s hardware or social networks for example, the differences are are striking.

But something disruptive, this way comes. And the truth is, it’s been a long time coming. How we consume information is moving away from the paper we hold in our hands and also the inner sanctum of family, the living rooms where we huddle around televisions. In fact, Forrester Research recently published a report that documented, for the first time, we spend as much time online as we do in front of a television. Indeed the battle for your attention will materialize across the four screens, TV, PC, mobile, and tablets.

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