Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
I got into it with a ‘sales expert’ yesterday. He told me that “sales is a warrior’s job and the warrior works alone.” I thought, don’t bet your moccasins on that.
It’s true that the best salespeople seem to be ‘hunters’ and not ‘gatherers’. But it’s also true that the most valuable hunters are the ones who hunt for the good of their tribe—not just for themselves. In sales, these hunters remain true to their mission. The needs of their tribe take precedence over their personal interests.
Dear Publishers and business leaders,
Your business is dying. You know it. Your readers know it. So what are you doing about it?
The belief that the Internet was the death knell of print – and maybe even cable news – was a bit of an exaggeration although your revenue statements clearly show it’s had a major impact.
I’ve seen attempts to move content online via tiered, paid subscription models, which clearly isn’t working to reverse your financial fortunes. I’m thinking you’re all sending Apple Christmas baskets to thank them for the iPad, which – for a time anyway – has enabled the sale of content via Tablet magazines. Still, adoption for paid digital magazines on tablets is a far cry from the heydays of the print publishing industry.
Growing up, my mom always said “readers are leaders.” I think that statement is largely true. Reading and consuming information helps us grow and expand our knowledge.
However, with so much content to consume – through blogs, books and social networks – we’ve become bloated by digesting a bunch of stuff that’s not getting us any closer to our goals.
You see, we can read, scan and tweet all day long, but that practice will NOT help you succeed.
Before you jump on my case, let me explain.
Has the relevance of the community manager already come and gone? Just four years ago, it would be difficult to name a company that employed someone to grow and nurture their communities. Today, it would be equally as difficult to name a company that doesn’t.
As you read this, hundreds of community managers are taking to their TweetDecks and HootSuites to manage social media outreach and engagement. So, is community management really dead? Perhaps not altogether, but the narrow definition of it, which has been used in the past four years, most definitely is.
Awareness Networks released insights and prognosis from 34 business and marketing leaders as part of its 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions report.It’s written for marketing strategists, brand marketers and consults and those working in agencies. I think you’ll find it interesting to say the least and perhaps even prescriptive.
What do “butts,” “ChapStick,” and “social” have in common? They are all part of a recent huge—and very public – series of poor choices that have seriously impacted the reputation of a major brand. I actually pulled those three words from the categories assigned to Tim Nudd’s recent AdWeek article, ChapStick Gets Itself in A Social Media Death Spiral.
So what happened? Long story short (read the article for full details), ChapStick posted an ad that was offensive to some people, and when those people voiced their opinions on ChapStick’s Facebook Fan Page, ChapStick deleted those comments… and kept deleting them as they were posted.
Not Search Engine Marketing. Not PPC. Not even Social Media Marketing. No, the #1 thing B2B Marketers and B2C Marketers alike want to learn more about is marketing integration and creating a true integrated marketing strategy.
This not-shocking-to-me finding came from a report released by Webmarketing123, who surveyed over 500 marketing professionals. There are other findings which I will share with you, but after reading the report and reading it over, I knew right away the one finding that stood out from all others and it happened to be the very last chart in the report.
We are at an incredibly important time in the evolution of “relationship commerce” (buying from people you know and trust). This is the time when our actions will decide if “relationship commerce” ends up as simply a phrase on a list of buzz words, or becomes an effective – and meaningful — way of doing business worldwide.
The deciding factor will be whether or not enough brands and marketers are willing to go beyond just talking about relationships … to actually building and sustaining those relationships with consumers, peers, employees, and others in their social graph.
How many of us believe in the business value of relationships enough to put in the effort required to turn a one-time contact into an ongoing meaningful interaction? How many of us even believe that “business value” and “authentic relationships” even belong in the same sentence?? I do, because I have seen this play out time and time again.
The promise of true and deep social media integration is not new. In fact, many of our favorite social experts have been envisioning and forecasting this evolution for some time (see Five Themes for Succeeding in the Validation Era).
I recently spent three days in LA at Blog World (Blog World and New Media Expo #bwela), with some of my favorite people (bloggers and those connected to them), saturating myself with information while starting new and building on old relationships. As you probably know by now, I love connecting with people online, but I love even more connecting the old-fashioned way – face-to-face!
Other than stronger connections and new relationships, the most important takeaway from the conference, IMHO, is that we all need to stop worrying about “where it’s going” in Social and start concentrating on “where it is.”