You’ve been hearing about Twitter for a long time now, and you’re thinking it’s finally time to make the leap. Maybe someone has suggested you should be there for business. Maybe you want to become good buddies with Ashton Kutcher. Or maybe you’re just curious. But it all seems like a bit too much to take on by yourself. You hardly even know what Twitter is, let alone how to sign up for it. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right spot. By the end of this post, you’ll not only know the basics, you’ll have your very own working Twitter account. [Continue reading…]
Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. Who’s yours?
January 31, 2012 By 2 Comments
Forbes Magazine unveiled its list of The Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers just a few days ago. I find these lists worth reading for a few reasons. First and most obviously, it’s interesting to see how the industry changes from one year to the next. What new faces are there? Who is rising? Who is sliding down or has dropped off entirely? Kind of like the nerd’s version of the red carpet at the Oscars.
Fair enough. But to me, a list of the social media powerful is very different from such lists for any other industry or activity. Social media has been one of history’s greatest levelers, spreading power to the masses in a way that is completely unprecedented. Traditionally, the media and decision-makers were small groups of powerful people, and the rest of us had to do whatever we could to get noticed or be heard. We’d write releases. Perform crazy publicity stunts. Hire a PR consultant or publicist. Do our best to find or build personal connections or generate groundswell of support for our talents or our causes. It wasn’t easy.
Social media changed everything. [Continue reading…]
Should Leonard Cohen write your next blog post?
January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Hallelujah! Imagine if one of the most gifted poets and songwriters of our time were to drop by to help you craft a few words. Together you’d wring emotions out of a weary soul, warm up some long-forgotten heartsong, and write a post poetic and inspiring beyond anything you ever knew you had hidden inside.
Yeah. He’s not coming. Or if he is, he didn’t tell me. But don’t despair. Leonard has a message for you that should help you plumb those darkest depths of your unfulfilled talents. [Continue reading…]
Media training can help make your company a good news story.
January 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Every now and then I’ve had a company or organization call me, asking how to get the media off their backs. I could hear the frustration in their voices. “The media is twisting the facts,” they’d say, “And we need to know how to make things better. A lot better. Now!”
Every time — yes, every single time — I have then met with those companies, we were able to identify within just a few minutes of chatting a number of events that led to such an unhappy situation. Invariably, the sequence went something like this:
- A group or individual had made a statement or gotten a story in the media that presented their side of a disagreement or issue.
- The media had then called the company to ask for clarification or to get an interview.
- The company did not have time to talk, or were caught off-guard and didn’t have time to prepare a reply, or were so offended by the story that their reply was to launch into a tirade and then hang up, or give a terse “No comment.”
- The story ran in the media, presenting the other party’s claims and giving no fair coverage of the company’s side of the story.
- Other media picked up the story, calling for interviews or comments. The company, by now absolutely furious at what they saw as misrepresentation or biased coverage, refused to return the calls or offer any comments.
- The publicity got worse, until someone on the team finally suggested calling a PR firm or media relations consultant to clear things up.
- My phone rang, or I found an urgent email in my Inbox.
Now, any of us can look at that sequence and say, “Of course they didn’t get the coverage they deserved! They didn’t give the the media their side of the story.” Even the execs themselves recognize that when they look at it in retrospect. But [Continue reading…]
Is creativity getting old? Or are you?
January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I read an interview with Steven Spielberg years ago that asked the reason for his incredible success. His reply was surprisingly simple: he had never lost his sense of childlike wonder. He could still be excited by a haunted house or thrilled by the idea of a dinosaur.
If hanging on to our childhood is the secret to creativity, how do you rate?
When we were young we often expected more of ourselves and demanded more of others. We had a vision of what we wanted to be, and to meet it we set our own standards of acceptable conduct. No fries except on Saturday; no wearing out-of-style clothes even when you’re just hanging out with friends. But then everyone aged and along the way, some things changed. We became more mature and realized that beauty was “not as important” as it once seemed. Our ideals were no longer seen to be practical, and high standards no longer realistic. As Dan Hill used to sing, “Freedom takes on new meaning when you’ve got a family of five.”
But in reality, did the ideals become less practical, or did we just become less idealistic? Did we become wiser or did we become lazy? [Continue reading…]
Avoiding Facebook’s new timeline? Your time’s almost up!
January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
If you’re on Facebook — hmmm, does that leave anyone out? — you’re already familiar with the new “timeline” feature. Love it or hate it? Using it already, or avoiding it like the plague? No matter what you think of it, your option of whether or not to use it will soon be history.
Facebook announced today that the timeline will soon be mandatory on everyone’s profile. Yep, even yours. As they put it…
Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you’ll have 7 days to preview what’s there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it.
Five ways to market with blogging and social media.
January 20, 2012 By 2 Comments
Sales are built on trust and relationships. If we believe something does what we want and the price is right, we’ll buy it. On the other hand, if we don’t think the ingredients are safe or we just don’t believe it’s going to work, we won’t buy. And if we don’t like or trust the person selling it or representing it in a commercial, we almost certainly won’t buy. Trust is big.
To address this reality, companies often rely on trusted celebrities or word of mouth to increase sales. If we hear someone we trust say they like a product, we transfer our trust from that person to the product. A big company might be lying just to increase sales. But would Mom? The guy next door who knows cars inside out? Beyonce? No way they’d lie. We believe them, and we therefore believe in the products they recommend.
That’s where blogging and social media can come into play.
January’s just-gotta-share YouTube videos: crazy inventions.
January 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I remember spilling a glass of water into a client’s lap once. We were eating at a restaurant in Miami, and my elbow nudged the end of a knife sitting by my plate. That knife then pushed my glass forward, which hit a plate in the middle of the table, and that moved a vase and then another plate in the middle that then knocked over my client’s full glass of water, pouring the contents directly into his lap. It was a moment of horror and embarrassment, but at the same time I kept thinking, “Woah, that was amazing!” Sorry, Tony, and thanks for being such a good sport. Truth be told, recreating that sequence of events would have been no small feat. It was just meant to happen.
Even that sequence fell far short of what Joseph Herscher created though with the superfantastic page turner that he invented. This machine’s got everything from strings and balls to a burning fuse and a Bunsen burner, tipping books, a vase, a computer, a hair dryer, and of course a hamster, to mention just a few of the pieces in this ingenious invention. Remember the game Mousetrap? It’s got nothing on the Herscher’s Page Turner!
Check it out, and be prepared to be amazed… [Continue reading…]
Marriage proposals, basketball, Lego and social media. A good idea?
January 13, 2012 By 2 Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPkxzHKLpk”
There aren’t many moments in life more notable — and either more fantastically rewarding or mercilessly soul crushing — than the marriage proposal. It’s a time when you want everything to be just right, in the hope of getting the perfect answer. So the last thing anyone would ever want to do would be to [...]
[Continue reading…]5 ways to make your New Year’s Resolutions stick!
January 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I’m a fan of New Year’s Resolutions, whether for marketing a small business or being a Dad or just staying healthy. I like the idea of trying to be better. So it’s always a bit disappointing when the topic comes up, and 90% of the people in the room say they don’t even bother making [...]
[Continue reading…]Romanian chocolate bar raises American flag and ethical questions.
December 31, 2011 By 2 Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8″
A marketing campaign raising ethical questions? Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Marketing has a long history of pushing the limits of our comfort zones, and that’s great in many cases. It’s good to shake up assumptions and make us reevaluate limitations or boundaries we may have long accepted. Apple did this repeatedly, starting with their [...]
[Continue reading…]Why you haven’t gone viral. And why you won’t.
December 28, 2011 By 4 Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yavx9yxTrsw”
“We’ve got a viral marketing strategy. We’ll get our message out there in the marketplace and make it go viral, and then we’ll build on that.” I don’t like to shoot down client’s “strategies,” but I wouldn’t be much of a social media consultant if I let comments like those go unchallenged. For most companies, [...]
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