It has changed society forever. We all need to become our own experts – make it work for ourselves.

I took some inspiration from this post for a post of my own on social media – http://jet-productmanagementandmarketing.blogspot.com/2011/08/social-media-changing-society-forever.html

Only half-kidding. None of our friends have had this work done. So I’m back to the “Who do you trust” position.

I try to keep in mind that all clients are insane to some degree. That’s okay, I’m crazy too. But I’ve been down this road before and that really helps when setting expectations.

I’m with you – let’s see where the dust settles.

What exactly did they cultivate in their culture that made them oblivious to the wider trends and growth of the internet? I find it impossible to believe that Border’s didn’t recognize Amazon, after all they did build a reasonable online presence and create some interesting retail partnerships to help woo buyers. But what killed border’s is what is also killing publishers, and border’s entire business model was built around a co-dependency with publishers. Amazon’s model, completely independent of publishers, made it focus on distribution. What’s Kindle, if not a new distribution platform. Border’s didn’t stand a chance!

I think you did a great job of defining culture but the responsibility for a company’s success or failure lies in its leadership, not only in its culture.

See my blog posts on social media and branding this topic at
http://wp.me/pgW7Y-2Z
or if you want to read more the strategy failure at Borders
see: http://strategyinsight.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/business-disruptors/

I maintain a corporate blog and sometimes for eLearning and training. I always try to find people who write well to post on our blog. It’s interesting to see a variety of voices.

Jeff, appreciated this post, and the info about SEO. Just tweeted it….maybe you could write for our blog on “blogging and Facebook” or something? Our audience is trainers, educators, management, HR people, and anyone who is interested in learning and sharing about learning.

You can see QuickThoughts at http://www.quicklessons.com/blog/

Best regards,

Ann

Just got back from picking up beer. I’ve got to run the bathroom, wash my hands and then run other errands to prepare to grill out and watch a movie. I’ll leave another reply when I get back and share my thoughts on your blog post. Thanks.

The #101 is true to form because you go to great lengths to discuss the importance basics of not just PR, but also social media and branding.

Keep up the good and important work. Jack

You are correct about privacy and social media monitoring and responsiveness. I was at a networking meeting last night and our speaker showed a great example of a quasi-negative tweet he sent, which got a very quick follow up from the company. Good job by the company receiving negative tweet, and all went away satisfied. Crisis communications are vital in this internet age. It is simply a cost of doing business, which if you are taking risks, you need to be prepared to defend.

As far as Anthony Weiner, he so totally missed the boat by lying. He made himself a joke, and it’s sad he diminished a career with silliness and stupidity. I also wonder, however, if its the ego rush from the power trip that makes politicians believe they can dodge anything, even beat down the internet. It’s not savvy, and it’s not smart.

But it does make good fodder for comedians!

Great article. I saw it on Linkedin and read it because I’m setting up my blog. Quick questions:
Once you attach your blog to LinkedIn, do you have to start a new discussion and add your blog title every time you blog, or is there a way to do this automatically?
Do you post your blog title to all of the sites you mentioned separately or can you use something like Tweetdeck? (You seem to be the guru at this) – thank you!

I appreciate your upbeat focus on the basics. As a new business start-up, I am now in a role of expanding my focus well beyond management consulting to also include internet-based marketing.

I am intrigued about the possibilities for relevant and strategic learning and sharing among interested parties by means of these web-based tools. This is about developing “learning communities,” isn’t it?

~Norman

As with much in marketing, saying you’re something is much easier to many than being something.

Nice piece, Jeff. Thanks for sharing it.

I enjoyed your article and totally agree with the ‘keep it simple’ philosophy.

This point here : “the words I never want to hear from my team are ‘hey, you know what would be cool …” could never ring more true.

I cannot count how many times I have been involved with teams where time-lines have slipped out and work loads snow balled to make room for an ‘idea’ that presents little to no benefit.

Write the plan, work the plan, deliver the plan. That’s the name of the game.

Cheers,
Bianca.

Go to hubspot.com. Hubspot is a Boston-based company that works with marketing agencies. They have reams of data on the effectiveness of social media.

You build contacts through your blog. I would suggest using Linkedin sites that musicians frequent. In addition, I would send friend requests to musicians who use Facebook. I would tweet your blog links. This will all take about six months to year to achieve a critical mass. I have been blogging for over two years. It is just in the last six months that my readership has started to grow dramatically.

Their request was that our government work with our other interests WITHOUT assuming they own the podium. Increasingly, I am seeing high level wonks who don’t even realize they aren’t in the game making up rules and expecting others to obey.

The French don’t let Sarkozy cook. Why should we let him control our Internet?

Question: How does one explain the value of an online identity to the c-level suite? Specifically, what is the value associated with owning a linked-in profile for someone who’s employment path is much more traditional and reputation based? I see it as a corporate PR responsibility to encourage these digital identities as a means of corporate reputation management. Thoughts?

My son Jared and be reached at jefelix@wisc.edu.

Diane Castro, CEO, Young at Heart Communications, LLC

regards

martin

They also set up a Facebook and Twitter account. Guess which ones they spend the most time on? Guess how much of that time is work related.

Social media for companies requires strict guidelines for usage, but that takes work and given the amount of time employees have each day, it’s easier to say, “we don’t allow for social media during work hours.”

There’s one other comment I’d like to make. I’m not sure I agree about the creativity comment. Perhaps we’re agreeing but from two opposite perspectives.

What I see is marketing that has as its motto: creativity for creativity’s sake instead of developing marketing campaigns that incorporate a certain element of creativity but has its focus of selling the company (brand and products).

Marketing needs to regain its focus on helping customers/prospects move along in the sales process of a company.

I agree when I watching TV waiting for the president to make it official, I was monitoring twitter. It would have been better for TV reports to provide reports indicating Twitter feeds, social media updates (like done for Oscars and W&K wedding etc), rather than repeating video coverage (Boring!)

Pooja

A Platform to Help us to Distinguish Our Quality vs. Quantity Friends, Fans, Followers, and Companies

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flickr and others have been doing a decent job of providing additional marketing exposure and even in some cases, additional revenue. However, as more and more social networking sites pop up, how do you manage your brand across all these channels? Maybe more importantly, which one of these sites should you select as the one that will help you best reach your target audience? The proliferation of the social media avenues is becoming overwhelming.

This glut of information reminds me of the early 90’s when WWW was adopted broadly by the general public. Every company rushed to have a presence, to the point it became literally impossible to find the right information on the Web. That’s when a better generation of search engines – at first the Yahoo! and then Google – entered the market and helped us find the most relevant information by just typing simple keywords in their search box. If you had asked before Google launched, if there was a need for another search engine – most would have said no, we already have those….

Then came Web 1.0 & 2.0 – Youtube, Flickr, myspace, Facebook, Twitter and countless others have turned everyday people into content producers, influencers and experts. We basically tripled down on the information overload How do you know which channels to select for deploying your social media strategy? How do you know which one is the right channel to let your fans and followers to find you, your products, and services? Most importantly, who is Joe Smith that is recommending that person, that company, that product?

I hope my awesomize.me can accomplish such a mission. The site is not another social networking platform. Yet the portal to all your existing social media channels. The platform helps you, your fans, your potential clients to make an intelligent decision as to which company to connect to or follow via which social media channels and why? It’s free!

Elias
CEO & Founder
http://awesomize.me

Yes, rules of have to placed as you pointed including IP protection etc. Great article.

But I agree that you really have to be careful about how you appear online, whether you’re a job-seeker or a full blown organization. A friend of mine was told by someone else, a potential employer, that when they searched their name it brought up strange articles. Even though it was really embarrassing, they really appreciated it and it helped my friend begin to build a new, more professional online appearance.

Have to disagree with you on this one, Jeff. I personally know way more than 100 people through various social media channels. If one integrates online and offline properly and consistently, this is not difficult. But in general, good information and a good reminder to be cautious.

I hate to see people vent on Facebook or Twitter . . . it is inappropriate, and really, who’s your beef with? The person you’re complaining about is probably NOT reading your feed, or you could have had an adult conversation.

As for Scots Guardsman Cameron Reilly, what was he thinking?? That the bride-to-be had lookers on on her mind? That they were important in her grand scheme. Surely not. He wasn’t thinking. . . .

Your contention isn’t supported by your own evidence. That is to say according to the figures you are relying on show TV’s share of advertising spending is forecast to increase by about 5% in 2011. With internet increasing by about 6%. The loss it seems is in print media.
I wonder if the issue with TV is not the internet but the proliferation of channels, after all there is only so much audience and with each channels % of viewers declining so will the performance of their adverts. I also wonder how much influence on advertiser performance is as a result of the Sky + box and TIVO which enables you to record and skip adverts. So even those viewers you do have can edit out adverts thus further reducing their effect.

Elias

I also notice that your comment or rather you self promotion on this article, is identical to the comment you have made on “PR 101 Weekly Rant #52 Social Media Is Not Going To Disappear, But It Also Shouldn’t Be Left Out There By Itself”. This is rather disrespectful don’t you think?

Rgds

Laurence