social media

Conversations, Relationships & Renaming Social Media

There are, no doubt, a few good reasons for some business endeavors — in particular, professional service enterprises — to have concerns over the use of social media. For example, lawyers, doctors and accountants cannot be perceived to be offering legal, medical or tax advice in any media marketing context — social or otherwise.

I believe every concern I’ve heard can be addressed; but I’ll also cop to believing the benefits of conversations with clients and targets far outweigh concerns — provided, of course, ethical and regulatory issues are appropriately addressed.

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The Strategy and Tactics of Social Brand Building

I was recently asked to lead a Round Table at Humber College PR’s Personal Brand Camp here in Toronto. Participants included University post-graduate students taking a one year Certificate Program in PR, with an emphasis on Social Media. My assigned discussion topic was, “What are simple Social Media Routines I can use to Build my Personal Brand.”

Deb Weinstein at Personal Brand Camp

Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I am not a techie. While I adore the instant access to info and the joys of power sharing on the Internet, I’m hardly a guru when it comes to SEO and SMO optimization. Plus, my personal use of Social Media is so heavily focussed on Twitter, that my LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook (I’ve already folded MySpace) languish, sporadically tended to and virtually ignored.

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Smashing the Silos with Social Media

Smashing Silos

Our world is made up of silos.

People seem to instinctively create barriers around what they feel is their territory and so a silo is formed. Many people also feel the need to classify everyone and everything mentally tossing it into the bucket or silo where they think the person, thing or idea belongs.

Whether due to demonstrating personal power or simply for mental convenience, our instinctive urge to build a silo, or pop everything and everyone into one, inhibits both communication and performance.

And both of these actions divide us.

Silos inside companies, between companies, silos of nation, of class, of race, of religion, of politics and of sex have led us to today’s uneasy stalemate of apathy and inertia.

Living among these silos and allowing them to instantaneously limit our thoughts and actions as well as our perceived ability to create any change has in itself become a self fulfilling prophecy.

By so suppressing our urge to speak and the belief that anyone is listening, these silos have also effectively taken away our voice.

Social media gives us back our voice.

As employees, consumers and citizens the first thing we must do with this emerging communications ability is break down the silos.

Smashing the silos inside and between companies and interacting dynamically with employees, customers and suppliers with a single focus on goals through social media will determine which companies will thrive in the future verus those that will die along with the siloized past.

Effective communication mobilized into action is the key capability that has gone missing in our world and this competence can now be restored utilizing social media as the catalyst for change.

Jeff Ashcroft

American Wellness, Internet and Social Media

Long gone are the days of being dependent on your doctor for medical information. A new Pew internet study on ‘The Social Life of Health Information’ cites data that states that in 2000, 46% of American adults had access to the internet. Now, 61% of all American adults look for health information online. This fundamental shift in our habits has revolutionized access to health information. People with worrying or embarrassing symptoms now often turn to the plethora of medical advice sites before presenting their symptoms to a physician, if they do so at all. This has led to claims by many physicians that people are being misled or inaccurately trying to ‘self-diagnose’, especially those lacking adequate insurance coverage.

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Innovate or Follow… but be sure to evolve

Everyone in every business is tempted to continue doing what works, maintain the status quo, don’t rock the boat, etc.

Embracing this strategy might seem to work for giants like Cisco, Microsoft, and now Google (although they do not seem likely to take this approach), but most companies, especially those trying to surprise (and surpass) the “giants” and disrupt the market or simply stay ahead, must innovate and by doing so shake the grounds of the market they work in. If you do not have it in you to innovate, then be sure to watch the market closely and get on the heels of those that do!

This is especially true in the social media/marketing space right now. What was new yesterday is what everyone is doing today so even more important now than ever as everything moves so quickly and adoption rates hit exponential levels.

If you do not evolve your approach and look to get on the cutting edge of the new… you will be left behind. Maybe not today or tomorrow… but too soon.

Take a breath and take it easy!

If you’re a a member of the leadership team in your company, you’re probably looking for real world examples of how social media is being used. At this reasonably early stage in social media adoption for businesses, the more real world examples the better! Both good and bad!

You’re likely going to think about the costs associated to having a social media presence and what types of return you’ll get on your time, resources and financial investment. Wow, that’s a lot to think about!

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Ford CEO: 14 Lessons in Leadership & Marketing

Alan Mulally

“We are fighting for the soul of manufacturing. There is no reason we can’t compete with the best in the world.” Ford Motor Company CEO, Alan Mulally

With these words, Alan Mulally, dubbed “Ford’s Comeback Kid” by Fortune magazine, summed up his passion for success and his confidence in the resiliency of American ingenuity even in the worst of economic times.

Alan spoke these words during a charitable dinner, on February 5, 2010, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The dinner was sponsored by a local Ford dealership, L.B. Smith, to benefit “The Second Mile,” a charity that offers a variety of services for at-risk children. About five-hundred people attended the event.

I had the privilege of attending the evening as a guest of the event organizer, fireball Anne D. Gallaher, a dear friend and business colleague, in the company of the great connector, Amy Howell, another dear friend and business colleague – a story of Twitter friends networking in real life, a story deserving of its own blog post at a later time!

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Social Media… maturing as an advertising medium

I’m really looking forward to the day when social media matures as an advertising medium. I feel as though social media advertising is currently pigeonholed into the same boat as mobile (which has been in the same boat for the last four years): it’s about one to two years away from maturing as a medium for advertising. That doesn’t mean that social media (or mobile, for that matter) is not a strong marketing medium. It just means we have to be honest about what needs to be fixed — or else bad ads will continue to happen to good people.

We also have to be clear on the differences between advertising and marketing. Advertising is defined as a form of communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services. Marketing is defined as an integrated communications process through which individuals and communities are informed and persuaded that their needs can be met by products or services.

The primary difference, when you break them down, is where your money goes! Advertising really means paying to broadcast or display a message, whereas marketing refers to all the differentiated components that allow a brand to convey a message to a consumer, of which advertising is just one tactic. Marketing is the umbrella term.

Currently, social media ads are inexpensive, untargeted and not as effective as they could be. Social media is great at marketing (when used properly), but it currently falls down when it comes to paid advertising. From a marketing perspective, it is a great way of engaging/interacting with a consumer through presence and seeding: creating a presence for the consumer to interact with and inserting (seeding) into existing conversations that may be of relevance to the brand.

Social Media: The Fabric of Community

Time to acknowledge the obvious: few things have had as much impact on the fabric of marketing as has the emergence of “Social Media.” In his book – The Chaos Scenario, author, AdAge columnist and NPR commentator Bob Garfield goes as far as heralding the end of mass marketing as we know it.

While many organizations (and marketers, for that matter) wrestle with the function and role of Social Media, and more still will debate some or all of Garfield’s conclusions, few will argue that things are changing. Fast. So, for strategists, marketers and C-suite leaders, here’s an abbreviated take on what is changing, and at least part of why Social Media seems to be growing exponentially at the heart of the change.

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