by Sherry Heyl
Several months ago I was asked how I learned everything I know about social media.
There is no simple answer to that question. I believe that everyone has many varied learning styles. I tend to be a sponge for some information. I can literally scan through the topics that come to me in my Google Alerts and soak up all the key points. The next thing I know I am explaining the latest information about Cloud Computing or what Google is up to now, but I am completely unable to quote any sources. Other information I have to hammer into my head. I do this by taking notes and then transferring those notes to my business plan, which surprise! resides in a wiki. I am able to apply the information to areas where it is most relevant to our business and client work. This enables me to access the information in a timely fashion when I simply cannot think of things I should know, or when someone wants those tedious details like stats and trends.
The most effective way I develop my ideas and knowledge is to "argue" or agree with or even "add to" the information I am reading. This all happens in my head. I rarely take the time to document my thoughts, but they often tend to resurface when I am giving a presentation.
This week as I was going through the many various articles that caught my attention, I thought perhaps I would document my reactions and share them with you.
How Twitter Will Change American Business - Time
As Twitter grows, it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter — both at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and at the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.
This is so SIMPLISTIC! This can be written about any social networking platform, Twitter being one of them. Many people including you customers, will never be on Twitter. In social media there is no longer a one size fits all and if you want to be effective you have to look at Twitter as well as many other communities. You have to be able to understand how to integrate the various technologies and platforms to be seamless. I appreciate the article raising awareness, but I fear companies thinking so simplisticly about their social media.
Top Ten Reasons Why Your Company Should not Have a Blog
A very entertaining and on-target post! The thing is that more often than not people/organizations think that blogs HAVE to be part of a social media strategy. That is not the case - especially if you think of social media as really caring about your customers...your strategy would be about them. MOST of the clients I work with never launch a blog, and when a blog is recommended it is usually on the BOTTOM of the to-do list.
Nine worst social media fails of 2009... thus far
First I applaud these brands for taking risks. Many/most of them did not suffer any real PR damage, in fact they gained more PR for launching a risky campign that went viral, if only because it was a failure. We can all learn from failures, and it is better to learn from someone else's mistake than our own.
Some of the things I learn from these mistakes is to make sure your message is clear. I am a fan of House and saw the episode when they killed off actor Kal Penn. At the end I saw a quick memorial and thought he died in real life. It was only later - much later I learn what real happened. (In early 2009, Penn was offered the position of Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison in the Obama administration, which he accepted).
Also let your customers speak for themselves. Motrin's campaign might have been different if they used the real sentiment of the real mom's online.
There are many lessons we can learn from this post.
Starbucks Is Now the Official Joe of ‘Morning Joe’
Everything old is new again. I vaguely remember a time when TV shows were brought to you by a sponsor. Most of my life has been plagued with noisy advertising that I have learned to tune out. However, with so many channels and opportunities to sponsor content, I believe it would be most effective for an advertiser to step away from a crowd and to become official sponsors of content again.
This is something that Daddy-o and I were speaking about the other day. Daddy-o has been in the music business for a very long time. He knows that the old revenue models for the music industry are gone. He expressed to me that artists will become channels, although they always have been, they will be more so now. Think about this for a moment, if you have Starbucks budget you can sponsor "the Morning Joe" but if you are a small nonprofit, perhaps you sponsor the social media activities of a local band with a respectable following.
These are just a few of the thoughts and ideas that flutter through my head as I read through the many various articles that catch my attention. If you want to see which articles catch my attention, check out our delicious account or follow along with us at Twitter.
Also, feel free to send me anything you think I might be interested in.
Sherry, thank you for encouraging people to THINK! Everyone wants the silver bullet, the magic wand. So they do what everyone else is doing without thinking, without a plan (aka strategy, to use a glorified term).
Yes, people come to me for Shortcuts (the silver bullets), but we all get REALLY excited when they THINK and come up with breakthroughs of their OWN. Then they don't have to follow anymore.
Posted by: Paul Johnson | June 10, 2009 at 10:11 AM