Marjorie Clayman’s Writing Portfolio
Professional writing profile of Marjorie Clayman
So, I have been hearing about all of this Vlogging now. My blogging wasn’t enough for you, Social Media World!! (I am raising my fist right now).
Anyway, it’s not exactly a Spielberg or a Lucas, but it’s a first! The quality is not very good, which I don’t really understand. Ready to learn!
I went to the mall today (I took a day off) and was generally horrified by the experience on many levels. There were so many overly fragrant smells that my allergies clicked into full gear. The whole experience was made more strange by the fact that the mall’s general sound system was playing some sort of ambient music that made me feel like I was an extra walking around in a movie. But what really bothered me…what really stuck with me…is that I saw two little boys playing on one of those little toy car rides. Neither could have been much over 8. And they were completely unattended. Now I am not a parent. I do understand that 2 young boys can be quite a handful when you are trying to shop. But I can’t really think of a good reason to find this acceptable.
Paranoid Android
I had always been really sensitive to the “stranger danger” approach. My parents trained me very well. Even so, in fifth grade, I was left unattended on a field trip to a nursing home (we had to “adopt” grandparents for class) and the son of my “grandmother” took me to see the nursing home chapel. No harm came to me, but when I related the story to my mom, you can imagine her response. It ended okay for me. It easily could have been otherwise. I wasn’t a dumb kid. I just felt secure and didn’t give it a second’s thought.
Then, in 2004, I saw something that drew even more attention about the dangers for children out there. I was watching the news and saw a video of a young girl named Carlie Brucia actually being led off by the man who would eventually kill her. Conversations sprang up everywhere. Did she know the man from a chatroom? Look at all of the other kids who were being kidnapped by people whom they thought they knew through the online world. Spotlight on.
Fast Forward to Now
About a year ago, I guess, I started seeing Foursquare updates. As I learned more about it through my job in marketing, I had red alarms flashing on and off in my head. Then I saw foursquare updates showing up in my Twitter stream. And now, this week, there is the news about Facebook Places.
Now, as a friend of mine would say, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here. I am all in favor of continuing to advance new technologies, and the marketer in me sometimes drools at the thought of what geo-location technology could mean for companies. But…
I have an 8-year-old cousin who knows how to text. Kids younger than that are getting on the web to play Webkins. Kids are growing up immersed with this stuff, and it’s all part of the fabric of their lives. Who is making sure that they know about the dangers of the online world?
Not even ten years ago, the big danger was awful people who would go to chatrooms, befriend kids, lure the kids to a meeting place, and often the story would not end well. What I am finding so troublesome right now is that if a person wants to cause harm, all they have to do is go on Twitter and search for terms that would help them out. They don’t have to have an account. They don’t have to sign in. Even Facebook is searchable if accounts aren’t locked down, and guess what? When I went into my account yesterday, all of the permissions were turned OFF for Facebook places. Are we making sure our kids and teens know about this stuff?
Maybe we could consider this before the first big tragedy happens.
You could say this all seems pretty obvious. Of course parents are going to monitor their kids’ accounts. And I’m sure YOU would. But I saw two kids unattended at the mall today. Do you think those 2 boys are going to be educated about the dangers of things like Foursquare?
Think about it?
Image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001
This morning, my Dad/boss and I attended the annual “Shelter from the Storm” fundraising breakfast for ACCESS Women’s Shelter. ACCESS is kind of like the little engine that could. Founded in 1984 exclusively to help single homeless women and their children (2 groups often neglected by other shelters), ACCESS has had to deal with continuing cuts in federal support and increasing demands on their time and facilities. At the breakfast this morning a video was shown that was simple yet powerful. The concept was based on a sight many of us are all too familiar with — a homeless person holding up a tattered cardboard sign. In this video, current and former residents of the ACCESS shelter held up a cardboard sign showing the challenges they were or are coping with, and then, the cardboard sign was flipped, and they proudly showed the progress they have made. Needless to say, there was hardly a dry eye in the room.
A couple of years ago, Josh Gippin (who happens to be a cousin of mine) developed a short documentary on ACCESS for the same event. In the documentary, and in general when you talk to current and former residents of ACCESS, you hear 2 things a lot. “I never thought it would happen to me” and the word community. Many of these women lost their jobs and their homes because they became extremely ill, didn’t have adequate health coverage, and just couldn’t cope. When they call ACCESS, they are feeling a range of emotions from shame to guilt to ineptitude to who knows what else. When they arrive at ACCESS, though, they feel welcome. They feel like they have been invited into a community. They are residents, not numbers.
Sometimes, “I never thought it would happen to me” can be good news
This talk of community wound its way through my brain and crashed into something that happened yesterday. Chris Brogan wrote a beautiful piece about my friend Suzanne Vara. He talked about Suzanne’s capacity for community-building. He talked about how smart she is, and even mentioned her love of the Mets and Jets. For once, Chris wasn’t telling me something new. However, the really amazing and mind-blowing thing is that Chris noted that he and Suzanne had mentioned me, of all people, as a friend and as a professional with potential. Suzanne wrote today that she considers me a part of her community. I never thought it would happen to me. Indeed, when I think about the people who populate my various communities — my Social Media community, my family community, my community of long-time friends, I ponder how it is I got so lucky.
Flip over that cardboard
I think that a lot of people associate building friendships and communities with sharing sad news, supporting each other during hard times, and always being ready to serve as the shoulder to cry on. These are all important functions, but it is only the sad part of the tale. The women of ACCESS have been able to build a community based on a shared will to survive and thrive. I have been invited into communities where respect, admiration, adoration, fun, and dedication march by perpetually in a ticker tape parade. Why don’t we try to build communities on the new side of the cardboard? Why look for the company that misery loves when we could look instead for the lifeline that leaves misery behind?
Since this is a marketing blog…
So what does this have to do with you? What does this have to do with marketing or business? Well, quite a lot, actually. You see, people are talking a lot about how business in the 21st century is about being human and developing one-on-one connections. But now, after thinking about this for a couple of days, I’m not sure that’s quite right. I think that businesses that will thrive in this new era will do so because they have built communities. Those communities won’t be built upon shared cynicism or shared angst. Those communities will be built on some central positive core that the business builds. I can’t tell you what the little nugget will be. It’ll be different for everyone. But people will latch on to that positivity. They’ll start talking to each other about how welcoming the house is that you have built. They’ll start talking about how nice it is that you provide whatever special thing you provide. You’ll listen when they talk, they’ll listen and talk to each other, much like people gather around a campfire.
Creating this community could begin with a simple change of wording. Many of us marketers write ad copy (and some experts in Social Media advise blog posts to be like this too) that is focused on a problem. What if we alter our focus to the solution? Everyone knows what problems there are. Our houses are always getting dusty. Roofs are always leaking. Kitties and puppies are always having accidents on new, freshly installed carpeting. We all know that stuff. It’s all part of the shared human experience. Can the message be changed? Can the creation of good feeling build a community as much as complaining about a problem?
“You know I love you” is not enough
The real glue in a community like this is showing appreciation. Verbalizing appreciation. Do your favorite customers know that they are your favorite customers? Do your top sales reps know that they are your top sales reps? Does that person you talk about at the dinner table know that you are really amazed at how they are kicking butt?
The amazing thing about so many people I have met in the Social Media world, people like Suzanne and Chris and Maya Paveza and Stanford Smith and Lisa Alexander and Danny Garcia and so many others too numerous to name is that they aren’t shy about saying a kind word. It doesn’t have to be your birthday or a holiday. It doesn’t have to be a reaction to a tragic tweet or a funny Facebook update. They just lift you up because that’s what they do. That’s why they are great community builders, in the end. You know where they stand with you, and if you stand well, it’s an honor.
Translate that to all facets of your life. Lift your family up. Lift your friends up. Lift up your customers and your co-workers. Build community. Create in people around you that wonderful version of an oft-heard phrase. “I never thought it would happen to me.” What do you think? Can we do it?
2nd Image Credit: Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/leovdworp
3rd Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/spekulator
There are tons and tons of books out there on Social Media, and I get the feeling more are being created as we speak, but the whole secret to finding success in Social Media can really be summed up by two words. Talking and Answers.
What? What were you thinking of?
What does Social Media success look like?
Before I explain myself, I feel it’s important to clarify that “success” is a three-tiered monster when it comes to social networking sites.
In no particular order (with 1 being the most important in my book), those three tiers are:
1. Meeting brilliant, amazing, wonderful people
2. Creating professional networks that can serve your business in the future
3. Creating money-making scenarios for you and/or your business
Now that we’re on the same page, let’s get back to T&A (talking and answers)
Talking
Last night during the inaugural #techchat on Twitter, some ideas were thrown around regarding how to interact (or react) on Twitter. As I’ve mentioned before, when I first started tweeting, I was generally a link posting machine. It was boring for me, and I’m pretty certain it was boring for any folks who were following me at the time. So I decided, “Well, maybe I’ll just start talking to people. Like how we used to do in real life.” That decision, I am convinced, is what made Twitter become a resource for me rather than just something to post to.
There’s a lot of pressure on people to post nothing but meaningful and interesting things when using Social Media for business. We are constantly told that we need to make ourselves stand out, we need to prove we are thought leaders, etc. I’m sure a lot of that is true to at least some extent. However, it’s okay, and sometimes extremely rewarding, to talk about things that are perhaps not as valuable to your general cadre of followers. Sometimes you will see me talking about baseball. Sometimes you will see me talking about Monty Python. Yesterday I lamented my failing reading skills as I kept reading news about China Unicom as China Unicorn.
My rule of thumb? No one wants to talk to an encyclopedia, and no one wants to talk to that annoying relative who talks about colonoscopies and doggy doodoo all the time. Stray away from those ends of the spectrum and you’ll have the talking part of the formula down.
Answers
That being said, talking about things, whether ethereal or boring, won’t necessarily help you meet people who are in your profession or who are interested in the same things you are. That’s why answers are also key.
Answers can be kind of tricky on sites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s very easy to come across as a know-it-all sometimes, especially when people don’t know how to read your tonality. If you think about it though, most of what thought leaders and other successful Social Media folk post consists of answers to questions you may or may not realize you have. Why are people like Denise Wakeman, Mari Smith, DM Scott, Ann Handley, Beth Harte, and Chris Brogan successful? Because they are providing you information you didn’t really think about needing. The information is provided before you even know what to ask.
Answers are the engines of success behind sites like PushingSocial, CopyBlogger, and ProBlogger. People go to these sites, retweet posts, and comment because there is always a feeling that the information being provided is important. It’s a constant stream of important answers.
On LinkedIn, giving answers is something that is requested. The “answers” section is a treasure trove for building this part of your Social Media portfolio. What I have come to enjoy is not just offering my opinions or solutions, but also seeing how other people answer and interacting with them. A combination of talking and answers can reveal many of your strengths simultaneous and can also be a great way to make strong connections.
You may be saying to yourself that there must be something beyond these two words that could lead to any type of Social Media success. I have thought about this and find that most of my responses pretty easily fall into either or both of these categories. I’m open to being proven wrong, however. Go ahead, make my day 🙂
1st Image by Michaela Kobyakov. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/michaelaw
2nd Image by Nate Brelsford. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/runrunrun
3rd Image by Julia Freeman-Woolpert. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/juliaf
Every morning for the last couple of months, the first thing that I reach for is my Blackberry, which sleeps comfortably on my night stand. I don’t reach for my alarm because, annoyingly, I tend to wake up 10 minutes before it’s set to go off. I reach for my Blackberry, and inevitably there is a little flashing red light signifying that I have email messages. Then I check Facebook and Twitter in a skimming kind of way, and then I begin my day.
Does your day start in a similar fashion?
Social Media seems to be everywhere these days, and its power and potential seem palpable. Every day there are case studies explaining how social media helped a start-up become a corporate giant. There are stories about how individuals went from a computer and phone to an industry leader. There is a different kind of success story available. It’s not as sexy. It may not sound as exciting. But it’s just as valuable.
The Zen of Standing Still
Late last year, we launched a Social Media services program we call ClayComm 2.0. There are two parts to it. The first part is research and the second part consists of various ways to implement an agreed upon Social Media strategy. We always recommend that our clients start with the research part before we begin any kind of implementation.
There is one story in particular that I want to tell you about.
One of our clients asked us to research what Social Media tactics should be pursued for their company. We ended up with research that suggested there just isn’t a lot going on in this client’s particular industry except for on YouTube, where there was a fair amount of relevant videos. We suggested keeping ears and eyes open on other channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but we said that YouTube seemed to be the best place to start. Instead of investing a great deal of time in a Facebook strategy that would have taken an extremely long time to bear any benefits, we targeted our client’s focus to something that would jump start their presence in social media. In the long haul, videos highlighting their particular strengths will be ideal building blocks for any type of Social Media campaign that follows.
The Difference Between Making Money and Saving Money
A lot of case studies point to a specific metric of improvement. We increased sales by x%. We grew by x%. There’s of course nothing wrong with such measurements of success. You’ve probably noticed, though, that there is not a lot out there about companies who jumped on to Facebook or Twitter and then abandoned the accounts. It doesn’t take much searching to find examples of these orphaned efforts. How much time and energy was invested in those accounts before the realization hit that it was not the right time or the right environment? What if a company hires a social media manager only to find that, as is the case sometimes, social media is just not as integral to that industry yet?
We advocate researching on the front end. Sometimes, the result will be that social media is just something we need to monitor. That’s not to say that it will never happen. That’s not to say that you can never be a pioneer. But we measure the risks on the front end, before the time (which we all know equates to money) is invested.
It’s not the kind of success that is easy to point to. It’s noticing what’s not there — a Facebook page with a few product promos, a company Twitter page with 3 tweets. It’s using time, energy, and money wisely. It’s the kind of success that can alter a company’s path for the better, even if the hows and whys are not known from the start. There may not be an acronym for money saved through researched strategies, but perhaps there should be.
Have you experienced a similar kind of success? Feel free to share it here.
Image by Bethany Carlson. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bewinca
I was wading through Twitter this morning, coffee cup in hand, when I saw a post from Ann Handley. She had been quoted in the Wall Street Journal! Being a fan, I decided to see what she had to say. Although I’m still happy that Ann got quoted by such an important source, the article itself left me deeply troubled. Titled “A Guide to Online Marketing Tools,” the article essentially is a “cheat sheet” for people who are starting their own companies and want to “easily design fliers, stationery, and business cards,” etc. Some might see the article as an invaluable resource, and others might see it as a sign of the times. My own perspective, as an agency person and as a believer in the highest quality work and the most integrated, cohesive marketing campaigns possible, is that the article represents numerous potential pitfalls that today’s companies, start-up or otherwise, could easily avoid with some guidance.
In order to explain my point of view a bit, let me review some of the points that the author, Shara Tibken, details.
“Get It On Paper”
Ms. Tibken begins by explaining how companies can use online templates to create stationery, fliers, and business cards. These websites are certainly no secret. Companies like Office Max, Staples, and FedEx have been touting these services for awhile. I won’t lie either – most of the time, you’ll get a serviceable product. Serviceable. How does this differ from what a marketing firm or agency can do for you, however?
Fliers: I’m not sure if the reference here is to sell sheets or something else, but let’s assume we’re talking about a single-sided sell sheet. Can you plug an image and some copy into a template? Sure, of course. Here is my concern for companies that take this route, however.
• Are you integrating important keywords and phrases into your copy?
• Is someone proofreading your copy?
• Are you making sure that the images used will translate well in print as well as online?
• Are you using a stock of paper that speaks to high quality, or is the stock kind of thin?
• How are you going to use the flier? Are you going to post it to your website for download?
Stationery and Business Cards: It’s really easy to take things like stationery and business cards for granted. However, when we work on these projects, we refer to the entire project as “corporate identity.” This tends to lend a little more gravity to the situation. The article notes that creating stationery and business cards is as easy as point and click, but there are other considerations that are not as intuitive. For example, if you are a start-up, what is your logo? What is your corporate tagline? Do you want or need one? What is the most important information to include on your business cards? These are all things that marketing and agency folks think about. If done correctly, creating a corporate identity for yourself (which could also include an email signature convention, packaging, and more) is much more than simply plugging in your contact information.
“Making Pictures Perfect”
Next, the article talks about photography. Ms. Tibken begins this section with an indisputable truth. A good photo can be a real key to success for any kind of campaign, or even for just getting a company off the ground.
The first thing that is a bit misleading about this section is that Ms. Tibken mentions all of the various sources a person can use to “clean up” a photo if it’s not ready to go from the start. You can remove red eye, you can add a background. Again, these things are not secrets. I knew about photoshop before I joined the business. The thing is, the kind of touch-ups that really show quality are things the article does not mention. How do you strip out an image, for example? Why do you need to do that? What is a hi-res versus a low-res image, and when do you need to use one or the other? What is the difference between a .jpg file and a .tif file? Which one, for example, would you upload to create your flier?
Next, the article discusses professional websites where you can purchase images. Again, nothing mind boggling here. These sites have been around for quite some time. Again, though, the issue is more complex than simply carrying with you a willingness to purchase a professional picture. One important thing the article does not mention is that because everyone has access to these sites, the chances for two companies in the same line of business to end up using the same stock photo are extremely high. Without the guidance of a marketing firm or agency, the burden will be on you to research what your competitors and peers are doing with their marketing materials. They may gravitate towards the same images you do. Do you want your ad or website to meld with your competitors in peoples’ minds?
Less philosophical is the problem of usage. Many photo stock sites offer low resolution, high resolution, and different sizes. Different sizes have different prices. How do you know, without professional knowledge, which you will need? If you guess incorrectly, that is more money out of your pocket.
“Don’t Go It Alone”
Interestingly, I thought this section was going to encourage readers to at least seek out consultation from marketing experts. Instead, however, this section details sites like crowdSpring LLC, which Bob Garfield talks about in The Chaos Scenario. The jist is that you don’t have to create all of your work yourself.
Well, you can probably guess what I’m going to say.
Yes, it’s true that all kinds of work can be generated by all kinds of people. Let’s use this hypothetical situation. You are launching a new product that you think is going to put your start-up company on the map. You know that you want a website, a sell sheet or brochure, a product-specific logo, and some ads. It is 100% possible to go to a crowdsourcing site for each of those products. However, without the proper guidance behind each project brief, you are very likely to end up with projects that bear no relation to each other. This is problematic for several reasons. It’s difficult to build a brand without recognizable features. It’s hard to stand out in a crowd without a cohesive campaign. It’s hard to translate your corporate and product mission to 20 different people, most especially if you don’t have that information at hand yourself.
Can crowdsourcing sites work? Oh, absolutely. But if you are trying to create an entire campaign, it is quite dangerous to think that using this methodology will save you time and money with a positive ROI in the end.
The ending of the article, which is where Ann Handley’s quote appears, does mention some good points. Make sure you have a call to action. Don’t just create content to do it. My concern is that if you begin to rely on these open source solutions for the execution of your work, you may miss some of the background thought, research and strategy that will make all of those separate pieces come together as one giant, successful jigsaw puzzle.
Will working with an agency represent more of an investment than some of these “online tools”? The answer may not be
as black-and-white as you may think. Although some of these online tools look cheap or free, the costs can add up if there are mistakes, constant changes, or updates made necessary by a lack of planning. Something to consider.
1st Image by Hector Landaeta. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/coloniera2
2nd Image by ilker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco