Why your social media marketing campaigns aren’t working.

Tip: Pushing your marketing campaign through social media channels isn’t “social.” It’s marketing. Nothing has changed. Your marketing department or agency might be telling you that you have a social media program, but you don’t. You might be paying for “social,” but that isn’t what you are getting for your money. What is really happening [...]

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The Psychology of Failure – Part 3: The Success Fallacy

We have heard it a thousand times in meetings, political speeches, at conferences and corporate feel-good events: “Failure is not an option.” Rah-rah! It’s a lie. Don’t believe a word of it. Failure is always an option. In fact, statistically speaking, it is the most likely option. (Probably more so if you have to remind people [...]

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Political logos: The origin of the Republicans’ elephant and the Democrats’ ass.

I can tell from the ridiculous negative campaign ads and 3rd grade rhetoric that it’s election time again. Funny how the very process that helps define this great nation turns us into evil little farts every November. It never fails: The finger pointing, the name calling, the innuendos, the cheap shots. So and so didn’t [...]

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Social media integration and change management: Overcoming the most basic obstacles of all.

  Months ago, Sonny Gill left a comment on my post about “Becoming P2P: Principal characteristics of the new social business” that drew my interest: Company/organizational culture is something I love getting into and am still learning a lot about. One point of interest that intrigues me – and what you mentioned – is empowering your [...]

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, a cartoon is worth at least a hundred.

Above: The state of Social Media “thought leadership” today. From Tom’s post on the matter: In the social media bandwagon, brands place a lot of emphasis on the absolute number of friends, fans, and followers. They treat that number as a proxy for how well the brand is reaching its audience. The assumption is the [...]

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Olivier, where the hell are you?

I know: I have been uncharacteristically silent these last few days, but don’t worry, everything is fine. Angry social media rock stars didn’t break into my house in the middle of the night to beat me up. (Some  may have been too busy tearing up the Blog World Expo in Vegas anyway.) Truth is that [...]

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A short history of Social Media screw-ups

Nice presentation by SMI (Social Media Influence) listing some of Social Media’s most notable screwups. Notice how many times Greenpeace is mentioned in these slides. Online crisis management, anyone? (What’s your plan?) This presentation also reminds me of something Peter Shankman talked about at #BrandCampU in Detroit last week: DBS. (The Don’t Be Stupid plan.) Think, [...]

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6 Common Habits of Highly Effective Social Media Rock Stars, Part 1: The Speaking Circuit

What would happen if I adopted all of the Social Media and digital marketing BS I usually warn you about? Wonder no more. Welcome to Day 8 of the #StepfordTBB experiment. *          *          * Before I begin, let’s reset our clocks a little: 1. Nothing says “I’m [...]

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5 reasons why the new Gap Logo is as magical as a bag of awesome.

What would happen if I adopted all of the Social Media and digital marketing BS I usually warn you about? Wonder no more. Welcome to Day 7 of the #StepfordTBB experiment. *          *          * This month, The Gap unveiled its new logo and I have something to [...]

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Secrets of the Social Media Pros revealed: Maximize your strategy with a Strategy Strategist!

What would happen if I adopted all of the Social Media and digital marketing BS I usually warn you about? Wonder no more. Welcome to Day 4 of the #StepfordTBB experiment. Unveiling the secret awesome sauce for success in 2011: Here is how the Social Media world is shaping up for 2011: Strategy will be [...]

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Content Strategy 201: How to increase foot traffic to your website by 356% in one day by talking about your increase in foot traffic!

Yesterday, I shared with you my case study of how I managed to increase foot traffic to my website by 305% overnight using 10 Social Media strategies preached by experts in the field. Among them were expert personal branding, not worrying about R.O.I., using Foursquare, deploying a bold avatar strategy, magical creatures, and of course [...]

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How to use unicorns to increase foot traffic to your site by 305% overnight!

I’m sorry. That title is a little bit confusing. Let me clarify: Technically, it was Pegasus (another breed of magical horses altogether), not a unicorn, but since many people get them mixed up, I figured nobody would mind. Here’s why: Real-world Social Media experts do that all the time. It is called Word-switching: Using one word [...]

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Top 5 list of New Media Strategic Strategies for 2011

Continuing our trend this week of embracing the notion that even the worst Social Media advice can sound pretty damn smart when you give it a chance: Below are 5 super-duper-awesome bits of advice from some of the best Social Media Strategists on the planet, paraphrased and edited to meet the rigorous standards of this [...]

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The new me: Living in the bubble isn’t so bad.

From Mark Smiciklas and Intersection Consulting, here is my new house. Well… It is more of a bubble, really. But a bubble can be a house, right? Yes it can. Especially when you own some unicorns and pixie dust, as I do. Those shadow people with black clouds over their heads and dark thoughts about getting [...]

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The 5 new rules of crisis management in Social Media

Continuing in the footsteps of the “new me,” as suggested by my Social Media guru betters: Shorter posts and no more criticism of anything. A new paradigm of simplicity: How smart turned out to be the wrong approach. All these months, I have been leading you astray with crazy notions of digital crisis management that [...]

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My first full day as “good” Olivier.

Day One: Positivity has its rewards. My inventory of awesome in the last hour or so saw the following entries: 1. I have not written anything snarky about anything in at least 24 hours. 2. I did not mention the words “snake oil” or “charlatan” once today except just now, to say I didn’t. 3. [...]

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Turning a new leaf. A happy leaf.

I was originally going to write a post outlining the difference between strategy and tactics, but it came to my attention that not everyone likes the fact that I a) call out bullpoopy, b) argue about semantics and c) tweet around acting like I am smarter than everyone else. Evidently, trying to “correct” people in [...]

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Content Strategy, Digital Conversation Strategy, and a whole new wave of really, really, really awesome Social Media services. Or not.

The bull$hit bingo of Social Media and digital buzzwords is just getting warmed up. If you thought 2010 was bad, wait until you see the new batch of whoppers awaiting you on the flip side of December 2010! Want to know what to expect in 2011? I can give you a sneak peek. Here we [...]

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