Consumers are more active on social media than ever before, and not surprisingly, many marketers are struggling to keep up. It seems that, with an ever-evolving sea of data and technology, marketers don’t know where to start. Marketers are told what they need to do, but no one’s telling them WHY these tactics are important or HOW to execute a campaign around them. The WHY is just as important as the WHAT and WHERE. In order to dominate, we have to remember the basics of social media marketing and management. So let’s get back to the basics: … [Read more...]

I was once fortunate enough to sit in a training session with Jake McKee, “The Community Guy.” We were talking about building brand communities, and he said something that stuck with me. I believe he was quoting Guy Kawasaki. “If you last three years as a community manager, you’re good. If you last four years, you’re really good. And if you last five years, you’re crazy.” I must be crazy, because I counted it up. I’ve been doing community or social media management of some sort, (albeit for a lot of different companies) for over five years. The ironic twist in this career field is the very traits that … [Read more...]

One of the advantages of having exposure to a large e-commerce company and the incredible talent within its walls is that you learn from some of the top minds in the industry. It was just a few months into my tenure at CafePress that I started to dive deep into learning from the team that runs one of the largest Internet retail operations in the world. And boy, have I learned. A common theme you’ll find in the discussions among the top engineers, technicians and marketers of these types of sites is with their metrics and analytics. Everything revolves around traffic, action rates, conversion rates and the like. Dealing with these numbers on a … [Read more...]

I was absolutely enthralled by a recent article about a band that, since 1988, has been near and dear to many of us here in my home town of Telluride Colorado, Phish. Phish ranks among the greatest live bands in rock and roll history, and a sizable subculture of Phishheads would argue that there’s been none better. Here’s a couple of summarized takeaways from the article, The Business of Phish: Over the past 4 years Phish has generated $120 million in ticket sales, yet by more typical measures of a band’s success (album sales – Phish’s are minuscule, Billboard Top 10 rankings – none, radio airplay – limited, hit … [Read more...]

My beloved Boston Bruins are currently working their way towards another Stanley Cup, so I thought today would be the perfect time to tell you about my friend Adam’s organization The Hockey Foundation. A couple of years ago when I first met Adam he was working for an NHL team trying to get them to embrace social media. They never fully understood it, he left and then he started talking about how he wanted to go to remote parts of the world where they had never heard of hockey and teach it to the kids. I vividly remember him first mentioning going to India to do this and my reaction being that I didn’t even know they had ice there to skate … [Read more...]

There’s one phone number that most people can recite, regardless of demographic. And I mean full phone number, not 9-1-1. Think about it for a minute: What’s the one phone number than most everyone you know has in common they can recite without hesitation? 867-5309. Tommy Tutone’s hit from 1981 emblazoned the number in our minds, and while little more of the song is all that memorable, “867-5309/Jenny” has an incredible marketing lesson buried within it’s one-hit wonderness. The song is the probably drunken announcement of a man who finds the number of a woman written on a bathroom wall. “For a good time, … [Read more...]

There’s never a dull moment in the parent blogging world. This past month has brought new highs and lows to this group, a group I’m firmly enmeshed in both as an agency which works with bloggers and as the founder of a conference bloggers attend. (I also happen to be married to a parenting blogger – my husband blogs on his own dad blog as well as in a number of other outlets.) Mom 2.0 Summit The high was most certainly the Mom 2.0 Summit, a fantastic conference for moms (and others) who blog (there were many men in attendance, and many non-moms too – my husband joined me). This was my fourth annual Mom 2.0; 2013 was their fifth anniversary, so … [Read more...]

As new disciplines emerge – like content marketing in the digital age – new jargon blossoms like wildflowers in a new meadow. Or sometimes like clods of cow shit. Whichever category you put the term ‘Persona’ into (for me, it’s bovine-centric), you can’t deny that it’s won a permanent place in the B2B content marketing canon. “Don’t even think about doing content marketing without personas.” is Commandment Six last time I checked. At Velocity, we’ve propagated the cult of the persona ourselves, with round-up blog posts and the occasional tirade about using personas properly. And yes, … [Read more...]

How does this apply to me? That should be the question we ask when encountering learning about the digital marketing world. Whether you’re reading a blog, a book, attending a webinar or conference, the one thing you won’t likely get is advice and examples that are directly applicable to your specific business. Conference speakers are generalists. People who write books are, too. Their job is to be informative and helpful but appeal to as broad an audience as possible. If I were to speak at an event about how to leverage Twitter in medium-sized floral shops, I would only help a few audience members. If the talk is how to leverage Twitter … [Read more...]

While doing some fundraising training in Philadelphia last week, I was introduced to an incredibly cool program called Spark. Spark was founded by a 7th grade science teacher who wanted his students to see why school mattered. The premise is really simple: place 7th and 8th grade students in apprenticeships with people in their community. They’ve placed students in apprenticeships with all sorts of professionals: fire fighters, chefs, pilots, artists, and tech folks. The results speak for themselves Spark has grown to serve in students in at-risk neighborhoods in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. And the results have been … [Read more...]

As I write this, I’m listening to the waves crash along the beach during my own recharge. The Social Media Explorer team trekked its way down to Oak Island, North Carolina for a workation designed to evaluate and refresh our perspectives on every part of the business. It got me thinking about the importance of recharging our digital presence. I’ll give you a look at what we’ve been reviewing over the last 10 days in an effort to help others step back and recharge their perspective. Get Out of the Office It may not be feasible to take your team on a company retreat to a beach, however, you can take a few days to get the team out of the office. Try … [Read more...]

The thematic meme running through the social marketing world of late is that we’re about to move beyond social media marketing as a primary practice to thinking more broadly about our marketing and our business. Social is part of a greater whole and social-only thinking won’t get you very far for much longer. Part of this is driven by the social consultants threatened by those of lesser breadth of experience. Part of it is the reality that the industry is maturing. Social is now part of marketing. Marketing is almost impossible today without social. But will this assumption that social is just part of what we do turn social into something … [Read more...]

Recently, a friend and fellow marketer asked what aspect of their favorite podcasts did people enjoy the most. I admit, I didn’t give my most honest answer. My favorite thing about my favorite podcast is that it’s only 15 minutes long. I’ve been listening to the very excellent Writing Excuses podcast for over a year now. While the writing and publishing advice is solid, I love their tagline. “Fifteen minutes long, because you’re busy, and we’re not that smart.” Most marketing and business podcasts run at about 45 minutes to an hour. If you asked most business professionals if they could spare an hour a week to listen to a presentation, … [Read more...]

This ain’t Back to the Future. It’s Top Gun. We’re going time traveling—backwards. You with me? Here we go… Is that Whitney Houston on the radio? Great song. Crank it. Oh, and did you hear? Mike Tyson’s the youngest heavyweight champ ever and the USSR doesn’t want to fight. Aviator glasses? Right on. You don’t look quite as slick as “Maverick”  (Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”), but those screaming neon-colored parachute pants and your big hair are just perfect. We’ve arrived. It’s 1986. Let’s get to work. We’re in some ad agency’s conference room. Lots of brass. Lots of glass. The chairs are cozy. In class are 12 folks who … [Read more...]

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes all the way from the UK via our friend, Michael Truby, Outreach Executive for Oxford based SEO company SEOptimise. As a marketer striving to make your mark in this competitive world, you’re probably constantly looking for solutions to help you devise the most innovative marketing program.  One that is also quick, has greater reach, and lowers cost would make great business sense too.  As such, using the web to reach customers has become central to modern marketing. Within this online world, email marketing and more recently social media are two tools that have emerged as ones wielding considerable power … [Read more...]

As a father, whenever I see children hurting it hits me in my soul. That is why five years ago when I first learned about the amazing work that Wediko was doing they got my attention. Next thing I knew I was joining their Board of Directors and now know first hand how passionate of an organization they are. You might not know, but May is National Mental Health Awareness Month and this week is dedicated towards raising awareness for mental health issues in children. You might also not know that 15 million American children have a diagnosable psychiatric or learning disorder? What is even scarier to me is that less than half of them will ever get the … [Read more...]

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is starting an important movement with her book Lean In and online community LeanIn.org The premise is that there is a vast inequality of women in senior positions in the workforce and she is committed to opening the conversation about why. In her Ted talk, Sandberg argues that “women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world.” In corporate, she mentions C-level jobs held by women are 15-16% and have remained flat since 2002. Personally, I’ve always struggled with men vs. women debates on equality in the workplace. It always seems to turn into a he vs. she debate that I find to be … [Read more...]