Social Tuesday: curating

Most people have become conditioned to juggle: work, family, social life and now social media. With so many ways to meet others, network, promote and share information, how do you know where to start and what’s best for you and your company? According to Chris Brogan, it’s all about prioritizing.

If you consider yourself a trendsetter (i.e. you never threw out your shoulder-padded jackets because you knew they’d be back) and are always on the look out for the next big thing, maybe you’ve heard of curation. Like a museum curator, digital curators separate the junk from the art. Steve Rubel helps you learn more.  

It’s not that the blockbuster hit “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” necessarily needed a strong marketing strategy in order to get shrieking preteen girls into theaters, but it didn’t hurt. Nearly three million viewers logged on to MySpace to view the live-streaming video of the red carpet arrivals at the film’s premiere. These staggering numbers prove two things: 1.) Robert Pattinson is dreamy, and 2.) Social media has become accepted as a major news source. Read more about how the film and other companies are successfully integrating social media into their marketing strategies.

With thousands of companies participating in social media, why are so many hiding their involvement? Visit a company’s website and often you’ll have a hard time finding links to their blog, Facebook page or YouTube channel. B.L. Ochman examines why this is and discusses how some companies are effectively curating this content on their homepage.

As a communications firm, we understand that social media must be an integral part of ongoing PR efforts. As Adam Singer puts it, “traditional and digital PR will merge and it will just be seen as PR.” Read more about his thoughts on why social media is vital to PR success.

Social media impacts advertising

At yesterday’s WBZ Business Breakfast, Newbury Comics CEO Mike Dreese said his traditional ad spend dropped from $3.2 million to $250,000 due to social media. He now spends his money on human resources to power Newbury Comics’ social media machine.

The world is changing.

 

Human media

When the economy is down and business interactions become increasingly more digital, it is imperative to “reach out” and re-humanize your relationships. The best way to do this? Although it may seem like a basic task, building your network of contacts, friends, supporters, clients and alumni is still one of the best ways to strengthen existing relationships and create new connections. 

 

The key to successfully doing this is simple: make sure to build your network authentically. This means creating a network of people who you genuinely enjoy connecting with. If you carry no hidden agendas, and are true to your personality, style and values, people will seek you out as an honest and genuine resource.

 

Now, take it a step further and connect those people to one another; it’s truly rewarding to be able to build a network for our business and clients, and at the same time help people who need to make their own connections, whether for employment, philanthropic or other reasons.

 

People will readily refer you and your business if they know, through the relationships you have built, that you are honest and ethical. And while we are certainly not discounting the power of the 140-character tweet, when someone you respect personally vouches for you, it’s amazing the influence they can have…and they’re free to not count words, and to only count characters in the truest sense of the word.

Calculating Success

In anticipation of increased hiring and an improving economy, we asked Patricia Fox of Pat Fox Consulting to share her expertise on assessing and predicting employee success. Enjoy.

 

When hiring team members, most people look for the obvious attributes: experience, domain knowledge and track record. What are often overlooked in the hiring process are three attributes that are just as crucial in predicting the success of an individual or team. The good news is that there is an assessment tool available that can measure and predict the impact that individual behaviors and values will have on performance, culture and motivation.

1. Behavioral strengths and blind spots: Understanding these elements is critical, particularly in regard to how they relate to the business goals and objectives. For example, the person you expect to do inside sales may have a profile that is better suited for customer service and is not so adept at closing a deal. Knowing blind spots as well as strengths equips you to leverage the team to offset weaknesses and also opens up opportunities for training and mentoring.
2. Ambitions or values: An individual’s ambitions or values play a key role in performance and motivation. Understanding key values makes it easier to predict things like sales aptitude, leadership tendencies, attention to detail and management style. You can improve motivation and increase job satisfaction when compensation structures, bonuses and rewards are in alignment with fundamental values. We usually assume that most individuals are motivated by a cash bonus. However, highly altruistic individuals may be more motivated by matching a charitable contribution or sponsoring an employee volunteer program. Someone who is more theoretical may prefer a company-sponsored class or course. 
3. Cultural fit: The collective values and behaviors of the leadership teams have a direct effect on the culture and performance of an organization. Have you ever hired a team member who is a proven top performer only to have it turn out to be a bad fit for them and the company? When you can measure and align potential new hires with corporate values and behaviors, it’s easier to predict who will thrive within the organization.

Hiring the right person for a job is always a challenge. However, having insight to critical and quantifiable key human values will enable you to hire star performers who can make significant contributions to the success of their team and the overall organization.  
 
If you’d like to see how your behaviors and values impact your team and career you are invited to take a complementary assessment.

LinkedIn webinar

I am presenting a LinkedIn overview webinar tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon Eastern for the Center for Women & Enterprise.

Click here if you want to participate: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/353308075

Social Tuesday: blogs, Facebook, Twitter Lists

One of the best ways to grow and retain a loyal readership for your blog is to consistently post. Sounds easy enough, but there’s one small catch: your postings need to be interesting. Coming up with new, interesting ideas can be a daunting task, but Chris Brogan offers suggestions. Click and get inspired.  

Now that you’ve mastered the art of the thoughtful blog post, it’s time to post thoughtful comments on the blogs that you follow. You may have extremely smart, insightful contributions, but if you’re rambling, post anonymously or have grammatical errors, your intended message may not be conveyed. B.L. Ochman provides commenting guidelines.  

Admit it. Facebook takes up a lot of your time. But are you fully taking advantage of all the useful features of the site? Probably not. Did you know that you can search, read and post tweets via Twitgether, or find out if you’ll need an umbrella on the way home by checking out WeatherBug? Steve Rubel explores more tasks you can do. Go ahead, never leave Facebook – we won’t tell. 

We often hear that while Twitter is great, sometimes it’s just too much: too many people, too much clutter. Ching Ya suggests Twitter lists to help organize your accounts and improve usability. Besides organization, there are other reasons to be in love with Twitter lists.

Online influencers vs. offline influencers: how does each measure their return on investment, and, more importantly, which is stronger? Often the most successful online influencers struggle offline and vice versa, so how do you reach the best of both worlds? Damien Basille weighs in.

Social Tuesday: Twitter, Thoora, blogs

In an increasingly digital world, success is more relationship-driven than numbers-driven. But when you’re interacting virtually, how do you create real connections? From creating custom Twitter backgrounds to choosing interesting topics for conversation, success lies in the personal details.

Research on Twitter trends is emerging. One of these trends, retweeting, is a way to share/forward information that you find useful and interesting from a fellow poster, and serves to validate the original twitterer. If you believe you are putting out great content, but are disappointed with the amount of times you get retweeted, it could be that you are simply “LOL’ing” too much. Read Brian Solis’s posting here.

Get all your media news, social and traditional, in one place: that’s what Thoora is aiming to offer consumers. Thoora recently publicly launched their free service that offers their perspective on breaking news based on Twitter, 81 million blogs and 4,500 traditional media sources. Check out Andy Merrett’s take on the new service.

If you are a novice blogger and are questioning your site’s success, you’re not alone: most blogs don’t live to see six months. Although people measure blog success differently –  ad revenue, visitors, reader retention – you may be looking for a basic way to gauge how you’re doing. Darren Rowse helps keep you and your blog on the right track.

Common sense might tell you that the more you tweet, the more link click-throughs you are going to get. But think about it: on Twitter, most people can only read a fraction of their friends’ total activity and all of those fantastic links that you’re trying to share may be getting lost in the Twitter avalanche. So what is an avid link-sharer to do? Dan Zarella advises you to tweet less.

Social media land grab

Did you hear? There’s a big debate on who is best equipped to manage social media, ad agencies or PR firms. Go ahead, Google it – I’m sure there’s some conversation out there.

My take? This needs to stop being an “either or” argument. This land grab for social media assignments has resulted in a host of qualified – and an equal number (if not more) of unqualified – social media “pros” looking a piece of the action. I think my son’s 5^th-grade class is seeing a presentation next week from a former creative director who now writes for Helium.com and has reinvented himself as a social media expert for the middle school universe.

What we are really seeing is the true emergence of the concept and practice of integrated marketing. PR, ad shops, marketing, search and digital firms are shifting toward this blurry middle. No doubt some firms are ahead of others, but there are more “experts” in this new space than is really possible. Building out a social media platform within each of the marketing disciplines as these firms are currently formed seems to me a losing battle.

Mergers, acquisitions, start-ups, niche firms – these are some of the opportunities that can help build the new marketing integration model. Firms that embrace shared services and collaboration, filled with smart thinkers, can also work to deliver optimal client results.

The next couple of years? I see a rise in new model firms and a likely consolidation of the types of firms listed above. Though some firm websites claim to espouse the complete marketing package, wrapped snugly in a social media blanket, I don’t think anyone has really created the next generation marketing communications firm yet. We’re working on it aggressively here at The Castle Group.

What’s your take? Is there a model that gets it right and offers that comprehensive mix of strategy, services and tools?

Social Tuesday: blogging, Google Voice, Twitter, Oprah

Are you a blogger or aspiring blogger, but can’t seem to find the time to give 100 percent to your postings? What if you could call your own phone number, record your ideas and then have a neat transcript sent to you for editing? Check out Andrew G.R.’s blog detailing how he uses Google Voice and ClipMate.

In the words of Chris Brogan, “People don’t use social media because it’s cool.” Perhaps a more accurate statement is, “Companies don’t use social media because it’s cool…they do it for results.” So, if you’re attempting to sell social media integration to a company, you need to show not simply tell them their projected results. And how do you do that? Make blueprints.

If you consider yourself a Twitter trendsetter, then you probably already compare your notes and predictions with great social media influencers Steve Rubel, Chris Pirillo, Leo Laporte and others. Just in case you’ve been busy and are slacking on your follows, Jennifer Van Grove shares their perspectives on emerging Twitter trends.

Do you believe that while consumers and individuals seem to have caught on to social media and its uses, many companies and brands seem to still be struggling to figure it out? Do you think the title “social media expert” is not appropriately assigned? If so, you and Michael Brito have a lot to discuss.

Attention: Oprah has joined Twitter. What does this mean to the rest of the celebrity world? Many stars now feel that now that Oprah has given Twitter her stamp of approval, they too should join. Go ahead and add these celebs to your “follow” list. Don’t feel guilty, Oprah says it’s OK.

Goby part 2

I discussed Goby in a recent post. Here, Walt Mossberg gives his review of the service.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704500604574485383786620844.html?mod=rss_The_Mossberg_Solution