JeffAshcroft – Page 4 – THE SOCIAL CMO Blog

People and The Power of Hashtags

February 27, 2011March 1, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

In these early days of 2011, contrary to the opinions of some, social networking has passed the tipping point. An interesting assertion but how do we know this?

All we can do is look at the evidence of these changes and it is mounting. We review the numerous attempts to impair internet communications and access to social media and start by sharing this quote during the crisis in Egypt.

“Clearly, what’s rattled the government is the major role that social media has played in the protests rocking the country’s cities, including Cairo.

“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Google Docs have been used in unprecedented ways this time around — both for coordination, and for disseminating news,” Jillian York, Harvard University, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Our small, medium and large screens are filled with images from around the world starting from the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, first the fall of #Tunisia, then #Egypt and now #Libya where it seems to only be a matter of time.

And not surprisingly, at this time even the protests in Iran and China are starting to heat up again and the governments there are clamping down quickly each time before the protest momentum can build to any significant level.

But interestingly there are also emerging examples here in North America surrounding both labor #wiunions and entertainment #oscars that are also demonstrative of the accelerating impact of social.

PR and SM According to The Social CMO PR Divas

February 26, 2011February 27, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

The Crew here at @TheSocialCMO is a diverse and unique group of individuals. Lately we’ve been looking at some areas of expertise and interest that have garnered significant coverage from our bloggers such as the recent Everything you wanted to know about influence but were afraid to ask pulling together posts on a number of themes surrounding influence including Trust, Relationships, Social Capital and of course… Influence. Now we turn our attention to PR and social media and the divas who make PR magic @TheSocialCMO .

So who are @TheSocialCMO PR Divas? Well the first to join us was Amy @HowellMarketing who’s agreement to contribute to this blog with me was the first step in Lighting the Social Media Fire at The Social CMO and had she declined who knows if we’d even be blogging for you today.

Shortly after this @AnneDGallaher Owner/CEO of the Deeter Gallaher Group LLC, a Pennsylvania marketing/PR firm came on board providing insights and introductions into PR and social media as it is applied in some of the largest and best known brands in the world.

The next of @TheSocialCMO PR Divas to join us was fellow Canadian @DebWeinstein who is an internationally acclaimed PR Pro, President and Co-founder of Strategic Objectives, Canada’s most award-winning PR agency.

And last but not least an interesting post on How Social Media is Changing Public Relations was also contributed by our very own Renee Warren @Renee_Warren founder of Renee Warren Communications and now Spark Boutik.

Why you may want to know what a wikibrand is

February 7, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

All of you wonderful marketers, public relations, advertising and communications folks out there who have a lock on and already have a dialed in plan for social networking and the impact it will have on your brand and/or business need to read no further. For the rest of you, I suggest you may want to learn what a wikibrand is.

After beginning the book with a short history of on brands and the phases of brand development since 1860, co-authors Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover compare the period of transition to social we are now currently in, to the Mad Men period of transition from radio/print to television.

But the power to be gained by transitioning to a wikibrand mindset really comes from recognizing and developing a better understanding of, then leading your organization across the Marketing Divide (see below graphic). Even more importantly, the book explores how marketers, through leading the migration across this divide to a social future, have the opportunity to again elevate the marketing function to it’s rightful place leading the parade of an engaged and dynamically connected company and it’s community of customers.

Not sure if this is another Mad men reference, but the authors also lay out and detail their FLIRT concept which represents Focus, Language and content, Incentives, motivation and outreach, Rules and rituals and lastly Tools and platforms. This represents the construct Moffitt and Dover recommend to build out a wikibrand and I will leave it to the authors to further convey as they explain fully in the book.

Once you’ve mastered the concepts around flirting, it’s time to get your wikibrand show on the road with what they describe as “Incubating Your Wikibrand Community” including sharing insightful methods for community development, internalization, management and of course measurement & metrics.

Wrapping up, in his Foreword to the book, “Reinvention of the Brand” Don Tapscott suggests this may be a seminal work and I tend to agree. I say this because too many marketers out there are still treating social as an oddity and handling it with their kid gloves. If Wikibrands does nothing else(and it does), it should through the logical analysis and evolutionary brand progression provided, lead marketers still offside with social to the realization that it is far from an oddity, but rather a portal to our emerging future.

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Full disclosure: For purposes of transparency, we did receive a review copy of the Wikibrands book.

We are all Chief Marketing Officers!

January 29, 2011January 29, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

No matter where you work, what your role is, or who you are, in today’s transparent social media world we have all become Chief Marketing Officers!

Every task you perform in an organization, regardless of your functional area, has a downstream impact on the customer. What makes you a CMO is that your firm’s brand and reputation rides upon everything you do, as well as the passion and personality you put into doing it.

#MarketerMonday with @JeffreyHayzlett on Social Media, Crowdsourcing & Change

January 24, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

In just a few hours it will be #MMchat time again and this week our SPECIAL guest will be none other than @JeffreyHayzlett for this Monday January 24th at 8:00pm eastern!!

The topic for our chat tonight? Is your business breathing in 2011? Social Media, Crowdsourcing & Change. We look forward to Jeff’s insights and on these based on his previous experiences at Kodak and as a cowboy.

Hope you’re all as excited as I am to have @JeffreyHayzlett join us and that you will all make the time to be with us tonight, for it truly is all of you who make #MarketerMonday Chat matter!

Remember #MMchat makes Mondays MARVELOUS!!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

The Impact and Value of Social Media in PR

December 6, 2010December 7, 2010 by TheSocialCMO

Tonight I was truly the thorn between two roses as we arranged for a real double trouble barrelled shotgun pair of guests to ROCK #MMchat19 and they were none other than Amy @HowellMarketing and @AnneDGallaher two of our @TheSocialCMO originals!

The best of the north and the the best of the south PR belles were on hand for our topic the Impact and Value of Social Media in PR and boy were those PR tweets flying! So you can imagine what happened when these two firecrackers teamed up to educate and entertain our #MMchat tweeps!

Nearly a thousand tweets later it was clear that this one was a classic that generated a transcript full of prominent and pithy tweets. This #MMchat transcript should be reviewed both by those just learning the PR ropes and is also a must read for those in PR just taking or getting ready to take the plunge into Social Media.

Thanks again ladies, it was a pleasure as always!

Cheers

Jeff

@TheSocialCMO

Social Media and the Helen Keller Effect

November 28, 2010April 28, 2012 by TheSocialCMO

Update to start 2012: Quick search for the exact phrase “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much” for the entire year of 2011 shows close to 33,000 results still being tweeted an average of almost 3,000 twitter mentions per month!

In January 2010, The Social CMO blog you are reading and this amazing group of bloggers now affectionately known as The Social CMO Crew was formed. When putting up the blog using WordPress, as always there’s a spot for the blog subtitle and because it seemed so fitting I used a quote I had seen fly by on Twitter at that time not aware of its’ original source and it has since stuck.

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much!

Since January 2010 this has been our rallying cry here at The Social CMO and been proven out in many ways including the creation of our #MMchat held every #MarketerMonday evening at 8:00pm. In addition as a group The Social CMO Crew now has more than a million followers that are all amazing tweeps who are continuously reading, retweeting and supporting this dynamic team of marketers as we interact across the social media sphere.

It wasn’t until months later that I was actually told that this quote was from Helen Keller, one of the most famous disabled individuals ever and avid advocate for the blind and other disenfranchised groups. I will not repeat her biography here, but you can review her entire story through her Wikipedia page. So why I am I telling you all this on Sunday in late November? It’s simple because this one phrase really captures the essence of the power of social media. That’s why I instinctively chose it for our tagline at The Social CMO and it appears that I am not the only one who has felt and been inspired by what I am calling the Helen Keller Effect on Social Media.

Yesterday I was at a chess tournament with my son and wanted to send out a tweet on my Blackberry of our tagline and Who Are We? page link as I do from time to time. It has been awhile since I had done this so didn’t have the tweet and link handy so instead thought I would just Google it to pick up my previous tweets with the link. Well much to my amazement for the next few minutes the results of this search literally flooded my small screen!

Role of Major Influencers in Cause Marketing #MMchat with @ChrisBrogan

November 23, 2010November 23, 2010 by TheSocialCMO

Did you feel it? Last night something happened when @ChrisBrogan took the stage on #MMchat for a tweetchat with you all about The Role of Major Influencers in Cause Marketing.

Not sure what you call it, spontaneous combustion, fusion or fission, but it sure was fun! And even more importantly we were all able to hear from and interact directly with @ChrisBrogan a major influencer in his own right.

Who better to talk about the issues from both sides surrounding working with major influencers for the creation of effective cause marketing in support social causes and the creation of positive change?

Please take some time to review and absorb the transcript from last night’s #MMchat with @ChrisBrogan. And I have no doubt that it will take some time, as there are more than 2,000 tweets from 450 contributors setting an all time record for #MMchat and perhaps all organized Twitter chats to date.

Thanks to all of you #MMchat tweeps and others for joining us last night and sharing your thoughts and questions on such an important topic, for it truly is all of you who make #MarketerMonday Chat matter!

Remember #MMchat makes Mondays MARVELOUS!!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO