LinkedIn 201 Basics: How To Share Thought Leadership [Infographic]
July 12, 2013 Leave a comment
Four easy steps to building your online subject matter reputation by sharing informative articles on LinkedIn
No Time For Social Media? Why You Should Make Some
March 7, 2013 1 Comment
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I came across this article, How to Make Space for Social Media, published on Harvard Business Review by Alexandra Samuel, Vice-President of Social Media at Vision Critical, a market research technology provider (@awsamuel). She had me from the first sentence:
Few professionals were sitting at their desks in 2004, eyeing the empty slots in their calendars and wishing that somebody would just invent a new way of communicating to fill those long and lonely minutes.
Nice. And, something I wanted to share in a way more robust than a simple tweet or LinkedIn update, which is why I’ve based this entry on her’s.
In the article she takes an honest look not at not just the reasons why it makes sense for today’s executives to be active on social media, but why it’s worth giving up other activities in order to find the time to participate. It’s powerful stuff. She supported one of my recurring mantras regarding social business for companies — hire a social media professional to lead the way — but goes on to address the individual executive’s reason for doing so.
Here are the four questions she says execs need to ask themselves in order to realize the value spending (more) time on social networks:
- What am I learning from social media?
- Who am I meeting through social media?
- Who am I reaching through social media?
- How am I replenished by social media?
Please read the article for the reasoning behind the questions. There’s a lot to learn — and to teach others resistant to the idea of devoting time and energy to social media — that you will be able to use.
After all, the best way to get senior management “buy-in” for your social media initiatives is to first explain the “why” before the “what, how and when”.
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It’s Marketing; It’s Social Media; It’s Social Media Marketing
December 20, 2012 4 Comments
Social Media Marketing
I’ve written before about who “owns” social media in any given organization (see: Who Owns Social Media? Ultimate Answer: The Opposites) During my decade at AOL (Community and Social Messaging), we worked in the Product dept., although viewing “product” as the home of social media may have been unique to the situation, both in the company (one of the first online community hubs) and the time (mid ’90s — mid ’00s). At BusinessWeek, it was the digital dept and for sure, what better place for a digital tool like social media to live? But at Bloomberg LP it was the Communications dept and that certainly made sense and where I am now, KPMG LLP, it resides in marketing.
So, I can tell you from experience, there are arguments for social media being based in whichever department I (or perhaps, you) work in at the time. As stated in my prior post it the goal should be that social media live everywhere in a modern organization and so usually I try to stay departmental-agnostic. So I am always on the lookout for some function-based thought leadership piece that makes a good case for why social is a key tool for them.
That brings us to this article,’12 From ’12: The Ultimate List Of The Year’s Top Marketing Lessons‘ on Forbes written by Lisa Arthur (CMO of Aprimo), where she lists her key marketing developments from 2012:
| 1) Marketing is transforming | 2) It’s all about engagement | 3) Accountability means transparency |
| 4) Social is a strategy | 5) Mobile is moving to the top of the agenda | 6) Showrooming is here to stay |
| 7) Zombies live among us | 8) Technology rules | 9) If you don’t have expertise, partner with someone who does |
| 10) We’re stronger together | 11) It’s never too late to start changing the game | 12) Stay agile |
It struck me that, without exception, what she is saying about marketing is also true about social media. Read more of this post
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Of Failure and Redemption: When ‘Twit’ Happens
October 8, 2012 Leave a comment
Social media and politics were made for each other. After all, when politicians get on their soapboxes, typically labeled CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FNN, et. al., the masses get on theirs named Facebook, LinkedIn, and yes, the insta-poll of all social media, Twitter. Here are two lessons for effective social media management– pre and post crisis.
By now, you’ve heard of KitchenAid‘s unfortunate social media faux-pas. During one of the biggest media events in the past four years this obviously unintended ugly tweet was issued from the@KitchenAid Twitter account: 
I say unintended because from the moment I saw the tweet, as someone who has manned multiple social media accounts for employers and clients, I knew exactly what happened.
Just about everyone who handles multiple social media accounts uses some kind of console, a social media content management system such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, or one of the other more sophisticated systems such as Sprout Social. I have no knowledge of which system the KitchenAid tweeter used (and keep in mind, it may not have even been a KitchenAid employee who did this, but someone at a social media agency) but I am certain s/he had both the KitchenAid account and a personal account loaded on the same tool, and simply forgot to switch from one to the other.
Lesson #1:
Don’t let employees, or agents, mix business and personal social media accounts on the same management tool.
Of course, the social media world exploded with criticism. But what happened next is a good primer for others on what to do when the Tweet hits the fan:.
Eight minutes later, the offending tweet was pulled and the first of a series of apology tweets were issued by Cynthia Soledad, the brand manager Click image to see larger version): 
This is a great example of digital damage control. No half-baked excuses. No “we were hacked” knee-jerk response. A quick reply, with apology, from a real person who can be contacted for more info.
Lesson #2:
Respond quickly, honestly and appropriately.
All of the above: brand damaging post on a social media site; remedial action; full accountability; full transparency — all leading to dousing the fire — happened in less that 2.5 hours.
In social media as in life, accidents will happen. KitchenAid’s response is a lesson for all.
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B2B: The Business Side of Social Media
September 17, 2012 Leave a comment
- “You can’t do social media from a standing start.”
- “You don’t have to pull your kimono completely open.”
- “Content is the catalyst of the social web.”
- “Be helpful. That’s the magic pixie dust.”
- “Where there is no margin, there is no mission.”
One of my favorite things about social media is what I call “serendipitous discovery” — the process where you begin by reading something which leads you to something else , and that leads you to another thing, and so on until you wind up finding some tasty nugget that you hadn’t intended to look for at the start. You just follow the trail.
And so this morning, while checking the Twitter stream of a friend of mine, CK Kerley, whose expertise in B2B digital marketing is second to none, I noticed one of her Tweets thanked someone unknown to me (Allen Silveri) for an “awesome article”. Being a fan of awesome articles on B2B marketing I checked out his Twitter stream hoping to find that link and, not finding a reference to an article, went to his agency’s home page, Schubert.com. That led me to their blog and this entry, Social Media Truths in B2B Marketing by Schubert’s PR Director Brian Courtney, regarding insights gleaned while attending the Social Media @ Work Conference in Harrisburg last October.
Whew! Got that? Brian identified five takeaways from speakers at that conference which I believe make sense for anyone engaging in B2B social media: (click for more) Read more of this post
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Bottom of the Food Chain 