Archives for December 2010

Being in the world of B2B, and being in an agency, and being in an agency that handles advertising, among other things, I’ve become pretty accustomed, over the last couple of years, to hearing about how various things are dead.

Today is #b2bchat day, and I thought I would honor my fellow B2Bers with a post about how things maybe aren’t dead. Positivity? Well, consider yourself warned.

One thing that always seems to be counted out of the fight is advertising, even despite the success of Mad Men. Perhaps Mad Men will seem less nostalgic and more in the now after you read this article from BtoBonline.com called Ad Spending Grows as Economy Recovers, by Kate Maddox. Put those coffins away!

When Facebook announced its new messaging system a couple of weeks ago, I found it kind of eerie how Mark Zuzkerberg specifically said that he was not gunning for email marketing. I tweeted to Christopher Penn, VP of Strategy & Innovation at Blue Sky Factory, an email company, and asked him what he thought of all of this. Shortly thereafter, he wrote a post called “It’s Dead, Isn’t it?” I think it says all that needs to be said about death warrants for any industry.

Is customer service dead? Is PR dead? Healther Whaling (@PRTini) suggests that maybe both are alive and they are working together! Give her post, called “Can you measure the ROI of Customer Service,” a read. I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Back in September, when Google Instant launched, everyone was saying that SEO was probably dead. Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media was not pleased with this death sentence. Not surprisingly (if you read Lisa’s posts), she verbalized this sentiment.

And by the way…I hope that posts about things being dead will be dead in 2011 🙂

What else have you seen diagnosed as being dead or mortally wounded that really wasn’t? What else is making a comeback? Share your thoughts here!

About a year ago, I decided that I would do the unthinkable – I would buy myself a pretty expensive…toy. Yes, I bought myself a Wii. The main reason, truthfully, that I wanted a Wii is that I had heard of Wii Fit and EA Sports Active. I hate going to gyms, and while I love doing Yoga, it isn’t cardio enough. So essentially, I bought my Wii instead of a treadmill or something like that.

There’s one thing you learn about the Wii eventually. The sensors mainly care about the position of your controller or your nunchuk. This is particularly evident when you are doing arm exercises. If you point your controller up like you’re supposed to, the game will count it as a shoulder press, whether or not you have a resistance band wrapped around your fingers.

If you wanted to, you could probably figure out a way to do the whole work-out without doing anything except moving the controllers the way the game expects you to. The game would pay you accolades. You would be told that you had accomplished your goals. You just wouldn’t have really accomplished anything meaningful.

In Social Media, the same logic holds true. There are certain things that you can do that will get you attention or more followers or whatever you are striving for. If you attack an influential person, for example, you are likely to get his or her attention and lots and lots of blog traffic. If you auto-follow everyone who follows you, you will likely grow your own follower numbers pretty quickly. If you promote yourself 24/7, you will likely gain a high quality reputation.

People expect you to do certain things in this game, and if you appear to be doing those things, you will be told that you have accomplished your goals.

Have you really worked out, though, if you don’t hold the resistance band in your hands while you stretch? Are you really accomplishing Social Media greatness if all you do is play the game and go through the motions?

I like to do the actual exercises. Sometimes I don’t hold the controllers quite right because I am concentrating on the actual exercise, not just what the sensors will pick up. Sometimes I work up a sweat and I get kind of sore. I like it that way.

How about you?

The world of Social Media is filled with pretty words.

There are people who will tell you exactly what you want to hear.

There are people who will tell you exactly what they want you to hear so that you do something for them.

Pretty words can be mesmerizing.

Me? I’m an action figure.

About a month ago, Beth Harte wrote a post called about market segmentation, how marketers have used it in the past, and how Social Media is changing the game. Essentially, Beth points out that Social Media allows us the opportunity to do what we’ve never been able to do before – understand how our customers are talking and acting in their “native environments.” Sometimes, what we hear and learn isn’t so good. Other times, it’s fantastic. The danger is that a lot of people and companies are depending on Social Media alone now instead of integrating what is learned into other channels and segments of the company.

Wednesday is Integrated Marketing and Communications day for me, and I join Beth Harte and many other great people for #IMCChat at 8 PM EST every week. So this week, I thought I would examine ways that companies are integrating Social Media into other marketing channels or facets of the company – via these posts.

Cheryl Burgess wrote a fantastic post about Crisis Management a couple of weeks ago. This neatly defines the issue that a lot of companies are facing right now in terms of their marketing and their branding. As Cheryl points out, Social Media crises must be integrated into the overall crisis management plan.

This marvelous post by my friend Barry Dalton, titled Things aren’t always as they appear, analyzes how Social Media can work together with many other departments and channels to round out a customer service experience. What you learn about your customers from Social Media can affect how you train, how you finance, and many other factors.

In March of this year, Scott Monty, head of marketing for Ford, blogged about how Social Media plus email is more power. Integrating email marketing with Social Media has been a hot topic this year. Next week I’ll focus just on that subject alone, in fact! In Scott Monty’s case, he simply notes that integrating email with Social Media allows companies to talk to customers in a “less disjointed” way.

Some companies are looking like they are behind the times because they are not using Social Media as they should. Leigh Durst talks about Amazon’s failing Social Media strategy and even offers them advice. Do you think Amazon responded to Leigh’s post? Another example of how Social Media could and should be integrated into branding, reputation management, and customer service.

Looking back on 2010, how has Social Media impacted other areas of your business? Share your thoughts here!

image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/rubenshito