Marketing Talk

I had a teacher one year who always insisted that quizzes and tests were “learning experiences.” This was supposed to calm those of us down who suffered from severe test and quiz anxiety. Yeah, okay, I was in that crowd. It really didn’t help me settle down though. A learning experience…learning how to take tests? Learning how to succeed? Learning how to fail? Why couldn’t I just have a learning experience by reading what I wanted to learn about? Life is hard when you’re a teen.

Fast forward a decade or two and I find myself looking back on this last week and thinking, “THAT was a learning experience.”

See, two really interesting online things happened this week. The first was that I hosted my first ever controversial post – one that I didn’t even write. The second interesting thing is that someone sort of called me out in the open Twitter stream. Because I have always tried to verbalize what I learn here as I learn things, I thought I would talk a little bit about both of these “events.”

[Read more…] about The Ultimate Social Media Lesson

There is one aspect of Google Plus that I really really like, and it is of course something you don’t hear much about (I am weird and I am okay with that). Let’s see, how can I put this? As a marketer, the online world can really drive you nuts because the pattern is that one new thing “kills” everything that existed before. It’s like everyone who tweets was brainwashed with the song, “Video killed the radio star.” The web will kill print, mobile will kill web, face-to-face will kill b2b, Google Plus will kill everything that existed previously, and on and on. The levels of irritation these pronouncements cause me cannot be measured accurately on any known scale of measurement.

Oddly enough, Google Plus has proven to be an ally in the cause for promoting integrated marketing techniques. Yes, Google Plus, that thing that people are saying will kill everything, actually is a great example of how to integrate a lot of different things together.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About What Google Plus Teaches Us About Integrated Marketing

This great post is by a new pal, Bill Dorman. Bill is a blogger who enjoys networking and adding value to his relationships. He is an insurance broker by profession. You can find him any day at billdorman dot me (www.billdorman.me) where all strays are welcome and you can even subscribe to his content.

Everybody has a story to tell about the journey that led them to blogging and thinking their work was worthy of publishing for all the world to see. Who didn’t have a few butterflies the very first time ‘publish’ was hit?

Most bloggers have some type of pedigree related to writing but some are novices just like me who thought “I can do this too”. There was no special ‘club’ to join; you didn’t have to be in the ‘in’ crowd so it was just a matter of making it happen.

One of the common threads is the love of writing and actually having a platform where you can publish your work whenever you want. And not only publish, but in most cases get immediate feedback. Most would agree it is unique indeed brought about by this crazy world we call social media.

Am I any good?

There are various forms of measurement used in social media and you can belabor which are valid and which are just an illusion. Probably the best form of measurement is the amount of satisfaction you derive when you hit publish and know it was a worthy post.

Yes, when people stop by and comment on your work that does provide a certain sense of validation; but then you have to avoid the tendency of only keeping a tally of ‘who’ is coming by as well.

If you write for yourself and don’t change your style just for a ‘certain’ audience, this is where you can ‘avoid the noise’ and find your own voice. It keeps you from always chasing and letting you develop your own audience.

[Read more…] about This Blogger’s Guide To Friends

Any day now, Google Plus is going to launch business profiles for Google Plus, and boy is there excitement about how that will look. Google famously ticked off a lot of brands and companies when they kicked out profiles that didn’t have human-like names in the early days, but it was all with the idea that eventually this brave new world within a brave new world would arise. No pressure.

My trepidation about Google Plus for businesses comes out of two major channels of thinking. One, I think a lot of companies and brands still have work to do in figuring out how to use other social media platforms for business. Two, the broadcast nature of Google Plus that I perceive (as we talked about on Monday) will be a turn-off for potential customers rather than a turn-on.

You’ll need to remember ROI has nothing to do with mothers (or fathers)

We’ve talked about this on occasion here at ye Olde Blog, but I think a lot of companies and brands that have moved online have sort of forgotten that they are here to grow their businesses and make some money (or that is my assumption, anyway, given centuries of capitalistic tendencies). Indeed, brands and companies have gotten so far astray from real-life business on platforms like Twitter and Facebook that many echoed Gary Vaynerchuk’s sentiment that measuring social media ROI is like measuring the ROI of your mother.

Sadly, it is not that light and fluffy.

If you are a brand and business and you are spending time online, whether it’s Twitter, a blog, or Google Plus, you are using your company’s most valuable resources – you and time. Most likely, you are getting paid for that time. If you are not bringing in business because of that time, or, to put it another way, if you are not getting ROI for that social media work, you are putting in a lot more than you are taking out. In most other scenarios, businesses do not stand that kind of thing for long periods of time.

In order to use any social media platform successfully for business purposes, there must be a return to the idea that that is in fact what you are doing. Yes, it can be fun. Yes it can be a lot more humanizing and all of that great mushy stuff. But the mushy stuff si not the ROI. The mushy stuff is the tool that you need to capitalize on to grow your business. If you go into Google Plus thinking that just talking to people through your new business profile will be enough, it will not work for you. Sad, but true.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About Google Plus For Business

Hello lovely readers,

I wanted to alert you that this site will be using LiveFyre as the commenting system now instead of the default WordPress system. I have been exposed to LiveFyre via many blogs I respect a great deal, including those belong to 12most, Gini Dietrich, Danny Brown, and Jay Baer.

There are some things I am concerned about that I will be monitoring, but I want you to feel free to offer me feedback too. If this system will make it harder for you to comment or if you have other issues, please let me know. Obviously I can’t make everyone happy (lord do I try!) but I will do my best to make as many of you as comfortable as possible.

Sound good?

When the word came out in June that Google was going to be launching another social media platform, I was not all that stoked. I realize I was in the majority, but I had not even really gotten the chance to explore Google Buzz before it disappeared. Google scares me anyway. Hello, search + social media? Lordy, it could turn into, well, Facebook! 😮 Despite previous social media flubs, though, there was definitely a sense of excitement about this new Google Plus. There were so many bells and whistles beyond just a social media thing. There was talk about how the hangout feature would kill GoToMeeting and Facebook chat. There was talk about how the +1 button would kill SEO. Heck, to listen to some of the hype, it seemed like Google Plus was just plain going to kill everything! It was going to be the Dexter darling of the online world.

I started playing with Google Plus right around July 4th, so I guess I’ve been there close to 3 months. That’s a quarter of the year, mathematically. And to me, at least, Google Plus still seems pretty confusing. I still don’t understand what “huddles” are. I do’t understand the difference between following and circling. Are you sharing if you’re following? And if someone circles me and I circle them in return, why do I get a notification that they have circled me back? That could go on forever, couldn’t it?

My biggest concern about Google Plus, however, is that it is not really feeling like a “social” media platform to me. The more I stick with it, the more it feels like a broadcasting platform. I know this because I realized with a start that that is primarily how I have been using it these three months.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About Google Plus. Do you like it?