Brandgroovin’

Photo by Matt A. If brands start with people, great brands start with great people. Not great in the sense that they are wealthy or successful or influential (yet), but great in the sense that ego, self-righteousness and self-serving agendas aren’t part of the equation. Instead, these people are devoted to a cause. Infected with [...]

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Aventures Modernes: My trip to Boston

Thanks to the awesome folks at Radian6 for inviting me to tag along Wednesday for their “Rock Stars of Social CRM” event held in Boston, Mass – which coincided perfectly with the #e2conf. Watching how Radian6 now integrates seamlessly with SalesForce.com, effectively merging Social Media monitoring and CRM, was kind of a strategic “wow” moment [...]

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Back in Greenville.

I just flew in. Downloading video from my shenanigans in Boston. Posts on the way. Good grief… I just wrote a blog post like a Tweet. I’ve hit a new low.

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I am in Boston and I don’t have time to blog today

… BUT I am shooting video and taking notes, so I have some great stuff brewing for you when I get back to the brandcave. Meanwhile, if you’re in Boston, Mass. today and want to come hang out, this is where I will be later today: Go here for details. (Be sure to register RIGHT [...]

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Engagement Paradigm: Just relax, be yourself, and have fun.

With all this talk of lateral vs. vertical action, depth vs. breadth of engagement, community managers, what Twitter “followers” are and aren’t, the conversation can quickly get a little overwhelming, especially if you are new to the Social Media  management world. So while everything we have been discussing here lately is pretty important, take a [...]

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Engagement Paradigm: Focus on Lateral Action

So we’ve been chatting about engagement these last few days, and particularly vertical action (essentially brands addressing their communities from the top-down, and creating mechanisms through which their communities can communicate vertically with them using the same channels). When you look at corporate blogs, Twitter accounts and most branded community sites, this is mostly what [...]

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Engagement Paradigm: The Breadth vs. Depth question

Yesterday, we redefined the term “follower” on Twitter and in doing so, discovered that followers are in fact not hapless little ducklings in search of a mama duck but actually community managers in their own right with a tremendous amount of power when it comes to helping brands gain traction in the social web (and [...]

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Engagement Paradigm: Defining the value of “followers” on Twitter

I was chatting with PepsiCo.’s Bonin (@boughb) and Josh (@jkarpf) about engagement last week when it occurred to me that the term “follower” may have sent a lot of people (and a few companies) astray when it comes to looking at depth vs. breadth of engagement. (I love these kinds of conversations. I always walk [...]

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Impossible? Think again.

“The person who says it can’t be done is always interrupted by the one who just did it.” – From the movie “Daylight,” with Sly “Rocky/Rambo” Stallone To every Social Media pundit or measurement “guru” out there who claims that calculating the ROI of Social Media is either impossible, too imprecise or even irrelevant, I [...]

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From hot to boiling: The “one degree” rule.

At 99 degrees Centigrade, water is hot. At 100 degrees Centigrade, water starts boiling and turns to steam. Steam can power locomotives, factories and ships. Hot water can’t. The difference between just being hot and being capable of moving a twenty ton hunk of metal is just 1%. That’s it: 1%. The difference between winning [...]

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Fearless

People are driven by emotions. By needs. By fear and courage. By love and hatred. By hope and despair. By a need to change things, or belong to something greater than themselves. At their core, drive and motivation come from the same inner place, whether you’re a G.I. storming a beach under a hail of [...]

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What Marketing Can Be

A little thought for today: Marketing is usually there to help sell a product or brand, but when you actually have something real to say – something valuable, something authentic, something that matters – marketing simply turns into a means of celebrating your culture and sharing it with the world.

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Peeling back the layers of your day – Infographics Heaven

This is what your day really looks like. Brilliant, cool, and so well done. If the video doesn’t work, watch it here.

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Who exactly is driving the Social Media bus in the Enterprise space?

I dig Jeremiah Owyang’s blog. The guy is wicked smart, usually spot-on with everything he says, and when it comes to digital media analysis, I can’t think of anyone who does a better job (Forrester Research really scored when they landed him).  But last week, one of his posts stopped me dead in my tracks [...]

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As a company, what are you really investing in?

Time for your weekly BrandBuilder reality check. There are only two types of businesses: The ones you know are the best in their category, and… everyone else. Advertising and marketing are nice, but too many “also in” businesses waste money on marketing and advertising when they should instead revamp one or two elements of their [...]

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It isn’t the media, it’s you.

image by ilisu Something Seth wrote quite a while back that still resonates with me today: “As soon as they start using the tactics of the other guys, playing the game they play, they become them. As soon as they decide that they can buy (not earn) attention, it all changes.” With all this talk [...]

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