I’m a big fan of Chris Brogan. He has become one of the most prominent figures in blogging and social media essentially by being himself.
He is a little rough around the edges – but is genuine, insightful and very engaging. I highly recommend reading the recent book Trust Agents, which Chris co-wrote with Julien Smith. I read it 4 months ago, and have seen a big uptake in the effectiveness of my social media campaigns as a result of applying its techniques.
My most important takeaway?
Promote others 12 times as often as you promote yourself. Seems excessive, but if you’re trying to make strong connections and build advocacy – these type of goodwill touch points are highly influential.
Anyway – I encourage you to watch this presentation he gave at New Media Atlanta last month. Its a long video in blog terms, but is full of great information and well worth the time.
Was reading mashable today – and saw an article highlighting some interesting new figures from the just released white paper The State of Search
Most notable of their findings is that “77% of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook listings that appeared for brand searches were controlled by a party other than the marketer.”
This is good news to me – because it validates a lot of my convictions about the importance of what I work on at my job. It puts statistics onto a point I was driving towards at a social media strategy presentation I gave last week:
The sun is setting on the days where companies are able to “own and manage” their search engine reputation.
The explosion of user generated content – combined with the soon-to-be standard of using one’s social graph to provide personalized search engine results, means a quick and significant shift in how consumers will be forming product opinions via search.
Soon you will see your friends opinions show up right next to the corporate homepage for a product (even if you’re too shy to ask for their opinion in the first place). Imagine how much influence this gives Mr. 40,000 Twitter Followers when he reports on a negative customer experience. Wouldn’t it be great to harness that type of influence from your business’ glowing supporters?
This helps me emphasize why being proactive about social media involvement is a vital piece of a marketing strategy. By being active, engaged & helpful in this space - companies can positively influence their brand sentiment and set themselves up for success when this transition in search behavior occurs.
So choose not view this shift as a threat to your company’s current “search engine excellence”. View this as an opportunity to produce the type of customer experience that will get your customers talking. There are some large opportunities in store for viral referential business for the companies that are building a happy and vocal customer base.
Stumbled upon this great SlideShare presentation a few weeks ago on calculating social media ROI.
This is very relevant to what I am currently working on at my job. It presents a balanced, easy-to-follow view into a somewhat new and complex subject. I have been trying to wrap my head around how I want to advance my ability to measure ROI in a way that is compelling and understandable to executives.
The main action I am taking from this is to start a timeline tracking key social media milestones so I can potentially associate them with correlative activity changes.
I plan to use this as a platform to provide insights on marketing, community management, blogging, and social media – all from the perspective of a young high-tech marketing professional living in Colorado.
I’ve spent much of my career thus far working on Community Building and Blog Strategy, so a lot of my writing is around those topics. Though I’m sure I will be diving into a wide variety of subjects.
Not trying to make a big splash or anything by launching this – but felt like this would be a good way to share some of what I’m learning with others who may be interested
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