Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

My Social Media Flame Out

January 11 2010

In the dogfight that was the 2009 bust we didn’t cut marketing spend, but our contribution to a glutton of social media crashed and burned. I failed just when you’d think social media would offer a cheap alternative with perhaps greater results. Not so. Both my writing and my reading waned.

SMS text from Twitter? I cut those from following 25 to 5. Facebook? Rarely. I couldn’t get a status update posted weekly, let along daily or hourly. LinkedIn? My lips were sealed.

But… Somehow I don’t think this signals the death of social media, but a shift in how we think about and use it.

A litany of sources employed by Socialnomics generated a crazy list of reasons why you shouldn’t take your eye off the social media ball. I pulled some of my favorites from this post. Go check out the full list now. Don’t wait. Serious food for thought.

  • By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
  • % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
  • What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
  • 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
  • 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
  • More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

I’m awake now. Social media has my attention.

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Work From Home

May 13 2009

At about noon yesterday (GMT-2) the Internet went out in our Bucharest office, so we sent everyone home where it was believed the Internet would be more reliable. And it was.

The outage was caused by a government initiative to crack down on illegal hacks into the nation’s cable television and high-speed Internet system. (Don’t worry, we pay our bills.) Luckily we have a second line unrelated to the first that kept me going long into the evening yesterday and again today.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere. If we can close up the office for two days and send everyone home, why do we have an office. Maybe I’d have more time to stumble across articles like this from Faustine in Tanzania if I was parked at my casita.

Some people are just more comfortable working out of the home.

Some people are just more comfortable working out of the home.

Face-to-face communication must have some value. In our business it can lead to creative break throughs. If travel weren’t so expensive, we’d spend more time sitting across the table from our clients. Creative reviews over the phone lose some of the pomp you get from a in-person pitch.

Not everyone has the discipline to work from home. Many are faced with distractions at home that make work there tough. I love my daughter, but “Daddy, hugs?” in the middle of that conference call can be distracting.

If the stars and incentives are aligned, a business might just be able to operative sans office. There are obstacles. It’s tough to build a car in your living room, but the majority of these stay-at-home jobs involve a computer. We employee a fair number of stay-at-home mom’s that tend to our fulfillment needs, but they are tech savvy and armed with computers and Blackberry’s.

One key takeaway for those of us in the Internet business is that the number of people working from home is on the rise. Many of them are sitting in front of their computers, which gives Interactive marketing firms just like ours something to smile about.

Eyeballs available. No bosses looking over shoulders. Yahtzee!

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Anyone else confused?

February 19 2009

All it took was one public relations professional and one social marketing hacker to spawn an honest, somewhat snippy discussion of the merits of expertise in today’s social media circus. Nicole is invited to attend a social marketing workshop. Giovanni is hosting the workshop. A self-proclaimed social marketing ninja, Giovanni uses considerable real estate on his blog to refute claims made by Nicole. So I go read Nicole’s take on the topic. A visit to KickingSand.com gives me Nicole’s side of the story–I had already soaked up Giovanni’s lengthy defense. Nicole quickly refers us to a rebuke of the social marketing carneys claiming superiority in todays’ topsy turvy marketing landscape.

Here are a few of the highlights should you want to skip the links above and move along to your next to-do item. Best to avoid calling yourself a social media expert. Any 20-year old with unlimited text messaging and a Facebook account is a social media expert, they just don’t know it yet. Meanwhile, public relations professionals seem quick to reinvent themselves and move the goalposts. After reading these posts it became very clear that even the pros are confused. If you’re confused, you’re normal. The lines between PR and marketing have blurred and the gap between marketing and sales is shrinking.

Back to work.

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