Most C-level Executives, CMO included, view “Social” as media—but they don’t know how to interact with consumers there in a meaningful way. They want to buy CPMs or Likes—but don’t know what to do with them afterward.

CMO’s also make the mistake of assuming that the social audience has the same pain and passion points as their face-to-face or store audience. Most often that is not the case.

In order to get the real value out of Social, you must connect emotionally to the people who are there and find out what they’re looking for. CMOs are used to ads and campaigns, so that’s the place they gravitate, but even Facebook ads are only media buys. Ads are good for building initial likes, but they really are targeted to demographics just like any other ad.

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The Power of Community in Social Media ~via @GenFabulous

by  on July 11, 2013 in Coffee with ChloeGenFabTVSocial Media – VIDEO interview below

Last year at BlogHer I had the chance to meet Ted Rubin, co-author of Return on Relationship, in person, but didn’t take it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTm5jhlYhTs&feature=player_embedded

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Give your Brand a “Personality Test”

Have you given your brand a “personality test” lately? When you think of big brands that stand out, what comes to mind—just their product, or how their communications make you feel about them? It used to be that mass advertising was the way brands developed a personality, but that’s no longer the case. With today’s social communications being so important to a brand’s reputation and perception in the marketplace, finding a way to involve your friends and followers in building that personality is essential.

I’ll give you a few good big-brand examples (personal disclaimer… Duane Reade and Mastercard are Collective Bias clients).

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The Content “IS” the Ad

1There’s a lot of angst in marketing land right now. With Google’s Panda and Penguin changes and social algorithms that favor engagement, it may look as though SEO is dead, or that traditional ads will soon be going the way of the dodo. What’s a marketer to think? Are we supposed to throw out everything we learned about marketing and advertising to date and learn to ride a new horse? How the heck are we supposed to get in front of customers now?

Well, things ARE changing. Traditional advertising isn’t yet extinct, but there is simply too much noise out there, and people are sick of it. They’re shutting out the blast advertising that has crept into every aspect of their lives and centering in on the things they truly care about—friends, family, and social connections. You need to take a step back and study this shift in order to take advantage of it.

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Blogging Strategy as it Relates to Building Relationships


Your personal and/or company blog, to me, should be at the heart of your social presence and be a driver for valuable content that can be used in so many places.

Here are a few things to consider in addition to just posting articles and working the SEO angle… four places to concentrate to enhance engagement:

1. User-Friendly Navigation: Keeping your blog easy to navigate with intuitive category labels will help people find the information they seek much faster. Here again, doing your research on what your customers are looking for is essential. Also, make it easy for readers to leave comments and share your posts on various channels.

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Who Benefits from Entertaining, Non-Brand Centric, Commercials?

relevanceWhat did this last round of Super Bowl ads do for the brands who created them? In my opinion, not much—when you consider the colossal price tag of the ads compared to brand perception. This past year a 30-second spot cost $4M to air, not counting the costs for an agency to produce it.

According to MediaLife, $1.85 billion was spent on these ads over the past 10 years, and all the while TV viewership has flattened. So who really benefits?

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Some Top Social Hits & Misses of the Past Few Weeks

TedRubin-HeadShot-10.5.11-200x300It’s a wild and crazy social media world out there.  Small businesses, big brands, celebrities and everyone in between continues to struggle to find the right balance of engagement and sharing in social media (some with grace, others… not so much).  So, who knocked it out of the park and who struck out in social media in the past few weeks?

Here are a few notable items that gave me cause for pause:

Missed the Mark (by a mile)

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My New Title, CHO… Shifting Your Mindset by Shifting Your Focus

I recently circulated a Facebook Post where I announced that my corporate title at Collective Bias was soon to change from CSMO (Chief Social Marketing Officer) to CHO. But I didn’t explain further, and it got everyone guessing what CHO stood for.

It was a great exercise. People guessed all KINDS of things, such as:

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Return on Relationship, The Book, is a Reality!

Last year I embarked on a journey with my friend and co-author Kathryn Rose to put into words what Return on Relationship really means. And after months of hard work, I’m very excited that our new book, Return on Relationship: Relationships are the New Currency; Honor Them, Invest in Them, and Start Measuring Your ROR has finally come to fruition, and will be launched January 29th!

Now, you’ve heard me talking about ROR for years, but this is the first time that the concept has been thoroughly discussed from more than just my point of view. Kathryn brings a fresh, practical perspective, and together we explore the depth and breadth of relationship building for businesses.

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Twitter for Sharing and Syndication

Many misunderstand the current power and relevant scale of Twitter. It is not about how Twitter has scaled to the general public. The most important thing about News, Content, and anything else published via Twitter, is that a great deal of the influencer community “is” utilizing Twitter for news, communication, and discovery. This information then finds its way to other publishing mediums be it Blogs, Traditional News Media, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, the water cooler, or whatever other mediums exist. Twitter is a tool that leads into other forms of social sharing.

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