Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
The_Social_CMO 
On far less lofty ground, marketers, advertisers and media types have for decades hypothesized about McLuhan’s precise inference, and the implications for which medium best fit what message.
And in the process, we often theorize right over the real point.
While working on a competitive analysis for a law firm client, I came across an alarming trend – many of the competitor’s blogs had strikingly similar content that riffed on local news stories.
When exploring this a little bit further, it seemed that many of the firm’s competitors used syndicated content from the same industry marketing company to fuel their blogging efforts. In other words, these firms are receiving content from the marketing company to publish on their blogs.
The marketing company is smart enough not to duplicate the content for each firm in the same location. However, the formula is nearly identical for each post:
Your odds of getting introduced to a CEO on Linkedin increase dramatically when you use the platform correctly. So, in the professional network of more than 150 million, how do you get noticed? Here’s a tip that will improve your LinkedIn profile and make you more visible.
The professional headline is the area that most users just fill in with the title from their business cards. For example, “Vanilla Sales Associate,” or “Lukewarm Account Executive.” What should they really state there? The headline should reflect a person’s full business scope or capabilities; the savvy user goes beyond their title and shows their skill set. This is crucial because the professional headline is often the gatekeeper for someone clicking to find out more about you.
Our Harrisburg Social Media Club has been active for two years now, and we have a diverse membership of entrepreneurs, media, academics, B2C, B2B, and the public sector.
Why would business people, joined by the principle of If you get it, share it, want to spend time after work tweeting, Instagramming, and Facebooking with strangers? Is there any business value to this stuff? Isn’t Twitter inane chatter?
With Facebook’s user base surpassing 1 billion, it’s inane to waste time discussing the communications heft of social media. New media has collided with traditional media at such force that entire industries and careers have been born—Content Creator, Content Curator, Social Media Manager, Digital Strategist. It’s hard to find a news channel that isn’t running a Twitter hashtag at the bottom of the screen directing the viewer to integrated information. Even The Wall Street Journal cites tweets as sources. So to “get it,” puts you at a business advantage.
B2B customers have become more independent buyers in the procurement process as a result of their increasing access to information, research and peer-recommendations. In fact, this modern buyer is something of an enigma to B2B vendors. Traditional lead generation efforts such as trade show and publication advertising, direct mail, email, etc. are decreasing in effectiveness. Lead generation through social marketing has received much hype yet case studies demonstrating real bottom-line impact are still few and far between. How does one capture their attention (and wallet-share) in an environment where competition has surpassed competitive vendors to include the increasing availability of information and perception driven by customers and non-customers alike?
What makes great marketing? I think it’s when you can really see, through the eyes of your customer, how great it is to use your product and are able reflect the emotions and passion related to the use of your product back to the masses.
I’ve studied marketing and word of mouth for 20 years. Marketers love control, but over the last several years of social media growth we, as marketers, feel we’ve lost some control. That’s not a bad thing. If you have a great product or service and you know how to facilitate rather than broadcast, you can catapult past competition.
In 1995 I wrote a book called “How to Market WITH Computer User Groups.” Back then, user group leaders and members (i.e. the geeks) were the analog version of every person in today’s digital participation culture. The point of the capitalized “WITH” in the book title is that it was ineffective to market “TO” user group leaders. The only way to be effective was for them to be the voice. It was important for them to own the message. And for the marketer, to enable them by reflecting the voice of the customers back onto them. Marketing with a mirror.