Think who will it hurt. Is the topic something that people laugh at outside of your twist on it.    I am all for creativity but sometimes it crosses the line.   When it does, it usually isn’t just a little over the line, it’s pretty much so far over that you can’t jump back in one step.  Now I may be wrong on this one, because there is no large outcry about the Gregory Brothers attempt at humor from the alledged kidnapping and torture of three Cleveland teenagers.   They used the interview of Charles Ramsey talking about how he saved Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight as the basis for the Gregory Brothers popular Songifiations.  They have become popular because the group usually uses political speeches, debates and interviews as the raw ingredients which they spice up with cover music and lyrics.

One of my favorites is about Five Guys.  They are clearly creative in their use of music and lyrics.   In the case of using the news interviews from the Cleveland kidnapping case someone should have said, “no don’t go there, regardless of how colorful a character Ramsey may be”  There is nothing to gain.   I would much rather remember the Gregory Brothers creativity in the Five Guys songify, then for their #Deadgiveaway take on Ramsey’s interview which evokes images of horror, not comedy.   I don’t want to put a link to the Ramsey video from my site, you can search it on the Gregory Brothers YouTube channel where they go by the name schmoyoho.

Listen to a conversation about this topic on the Beyond Social Media podcast Tuesday, May 14 at 9:30PM  EDT on Blog Talk Radio.  Beyond Social Media is a conversation with B.L. Ochman, David Erickson, and Albert Maruggi.  Ochman is a marketing consultant, a frequent contributor to Ad Age, and author of What’s Next Blog.  David Erickson is a marketing consultant and author of The e-Strategy Blog.

 

 

As an early user of social media I was an advocate.  I believed in the openness, the discovery of new ideas, products, people etc.  Sure it was a little wild west, but there were used car salesmen long before Twitter – that will never change.  What has happend over the last couple of years is a blatant disregard for brand intelectual property and a malicious environment that can be toxic for brands.

1) Brand Intelectual Property – What I call social brand infringement.  This is when a social message is made to look like it originated from a brand.  It can occur in two ways,  out right brand hacking as experienced by The Associated Press, Burger King and others or a site such as Let Me Tweet That For You that like this fake tweet from someone tweeting as Rachel Ray.

In either case it’s digital harassment by those who have nothing better to do with their time.   Now I’m not talking about legitimate claims by consumers who have purchased a product.  This is just messing around and it’s wrong.

 

2) Fake Complaints and Reviews –  This is perhaps a more insidious use of the social web in that these negative comments travel under the disguise of an “average consumer”.   Take the website Pissed Consumer this site allows you to post anonymously.  Not too cool about that, especially when companies reach back on the post to identify the consumer to rectify the problem and there is no response.  I believe this is an indication of a fraudulent post.  If a company can not verify a complaint then it is likely it is a malicious post, either by a competitor or a reputation management company looking to stir up some work.   Now Pissed Consumer is allowing subscribers to feature their complaint on the home page – subscription price, $5.99/month.

Companies need to see some of these less than transparent comments as attacks on their brand and call them out.  Social media has turned a spotlight on to the actions of brands, yet consumers too are no longer operating in the dark.  Yes, when social was new and most of its participants were optimistically naive, consumers shared their experiences without malice.  Nearly a decade into social, it’s not the same.   Brands need to carefully walk the line of listening, while also showing consumers where they are being wrongly accused.

Listen to a conversation about brands fighting back on Beyond Social Media podcast Tuesday, May 7 at 9:30PM  EDT on Blog Talk Radio.  Beyond Social Media is a conversation with B.L. Ochman, David Erickson, and Albert Maruggi.  Ochman is a marketing consultant, a frequent contributor to Ad Age, and author of What’s Next Blog.  David Erickson is a marketing consultant and author of The e-Strategy Blog.

Lordy Lordy, will wonders never cease in the world of public relations. Lance Armstrong will go down in history for the best PR comeback in a generation. (that’s my prediction) The last time this was done to such a huge extent in the PR world would be President Nixon. He left office in disgrace, ducking the issue of Watergate’s political gamesmanship and came back strong based on the success of opening China and American relations. Nixon’s legacy is not either or, but both. History left us with a picture of a complicated man who’s international vision was as grand as his myopic paranoia of domestic enemies.

Lance Armstrong’s public relations Tour de France is just as winding, as steep, and will be as fast as any cycling stage he his ridden. Only this time his passenger is Oprah Winfrey, a willing participant in the public doping confession as each gives the other benefit. It seemed odd that ESPN or CNN was not interviewing Armstrong, but in what is a carefully crafted, mutually benefit alliance, both Oprah and Armstrong now move on to page two of the story. Oprah is just a business and as such getting the Armstrong interview is a ratings game, which is why they made it a two part interview when it was originally conceived to be one show. In the best practices of PR in a social media age, Armstrong’s bet is this

• The public has a forgiving nature
• Armstrong’s #livestrong work on behalf of cancer research will trump his faults
• Oprah will have less to gain by putting Armstrong on a crucifix albeit, will not fail to ask the tough questions
• Hypocritical plurality (there is plenty of hypocrisy in the world, I chose to play the game)

On this last point there is a cynical theme in the last generation that runs through American society. It’s the compete at all cost or at the very least, let’s wink, nod, and laugh off the “do as I say and not as I do” behavior. Whether it’s Armstrong or Wall Street’s mortgage backed derivative crisis, baseball’s steroid filled asterisk records or the skirting of campaign finance rules in political elections, ironically society as come to accept a level of bad behavior in its search for a hero. This is less a comment about society as it is the description of the environment in which marketers operate and try to exploit.

For more on this topic and others, join BL Ochman author of What’s Next Blog and David Erickson, author of the E Strategy Blog and me Tuesday night at 9:30 Eastern for the Beyond Social Media podcast.

Look social is getting complicated. In this Twitter hiccup,Oprah, or someone tweeting for Oprah, indicated her love of the Microsoft Surface tablet, but it was from an iPad, at least according to this report in Tech Crunch. The mobile app of the tweet graphic used in the story indicates its source.  Much has been made of this Faux Pas, in fact as I’m writing this post, @NicoleLapin of Bloomberg West is teasing the story.     In the Tech Crunch story there are many comments explaining away the details as being a fact of life in a multi-device fast moving environment.  Lesson learned is this.

• Stuff happens be ready to acknowledge what happened and why (humor can work ), as far as I can see, there’s no interaction from Oprah about the topic despite all the coverage and Retweets.
• Things move fast, such missteps can seem like it takes forever, but really people will use it as a talking point to fill the void until another unimportant event overtakes it.
• Keep context around the mistakes and take notes, if it the same mistakes happens twice then it’s a pattern not a mistake.

 

Beyond Social Media

You’ll hear more on this topic on Beyond Social Media, a podcast I do with colleagues BL Ochman and David Erickson that airs on Blog Talk Radio Tuesday nights at 9:30 Eastern Time. We get into this Oprah story early in the podcast, click on the player below.

I’m at the end of my rope on people saying social content is “effortless” “easy” “efficient” (see Roget’s thesaurus for more) to create. It’s not. I’m not saying it is not worth creating content, I’m saying it is worth taking the time to plan, think, and execute content creation is a strategic way. This recent post at Ragan.com written by Allison King of TMG Custom Media tripped my trigger 5 Effortless Ways to Create More Content.

The tips in this blog are common sense, (make list of previous material, summarize content like speeches, condense stats into Infographics and so on.) there is nothing revolutionary here, but they are practicing what they preach because it created content. When in doubt find ways to regurgitate what you’ve said or done. Why? Because the world wants content, fresh content. Agencies are getting decent coin to produce content, it’s one of the ways they have discovered how to monetize social media even if most bloggers haven’t.

Look, even these ideas, and I agree with them, take time. If they don’t take your time, they’ll take your money to produce. I’m not writing a piece that is longer than four paragraphs and you likely don’t have time to read more than 4 paragraphs. My end point is this, good content is not effortless. If you have made the commitment to keep up with the incessant digital demand for content, then give yourself a shot at as much content creation as your can with the following ideas:

• Give presentations, even if it is to internal audiences, get up and speak (record, recast, review)
• Take positions on external events that your organization can support e.g. legislation, technology, breaking news
• Give commentary on current events that impact your organization or the subject areas in which your organization participates. e.g. natural disasters, accidents like BP Gulf spill,
• Work with vendors, trade groups, and customers on mutually beneficial issues that yield content, e.g. case studies, consumer trends, technology advances.

Beyond Social Media – We’ll cover this issue tonight in Beyond Social Media podcast I’m joined by two other independent consultants BL Ochman author of What’s Next Blog and David Erickson author of the Daily Numbers a great resource for marketing and social media research.

This notion of calculating every nook and cranny of social media is a ruse.  It may be used by critics to set off staff on the task of chasing their tails.   The question companies should answer instead of ROI is “do they want to have a dialogue with their communities of interest that are digitally active?”  That’s it.  To calculate twitter is really not about numbers, but about discovery.  It’s about quality of contact.

Social media is not a trade show with fixed costs, but a behavior pattern.  Why are some sales people better than others?  Is it what they say or how they say it, is it because they are constantly on the phone or researching LinkedIn profiles?  It could be both, each may have their own ways to go about the same task.

I submit that social is the same.  The culture of your company may not be proactive in which case the company might use social as a huge switchboard, listening for signals and redirecting to the appropriate department.  Conversely for companies that are prone of being engaging, that social is a forum for corporate and customer voices.

Of course there are plenty of metrics to capture that will help guide the social decision, but I don’t believe this is a decision to participate in social as if it were a capital expense decision. It is more a decision about cultural fit.

Beyond Social Media - For a quick take on the pros and cons of social marketing, listen to Beyond Social Media Tuesday evenings at 9:30 Eastern Time US. I am joined by BL Ochman, a long time brand strategist and contributor to Ad Age, and David Erickson, a business digital marketing strategist and author of The Daily Numbers highlighting key consumer trends, for a look at the week’s marketing highlights, technology discoveries and how companies are implementing social.
 

 

You make a substantial investment to exhibit or event just attend trade shows and conferences. Here’s a way to maximize your return on investment (ROI) from trade shows and conferences. I’m big on video taken at these events. Let’s say you are just attending. Use your mobile smartphone or tablet to record an interview with a couple of the speakers, or visit with one of the exhibitors about their solution, or ask them about the state of the industry, or the highlights of the conference.

Most conferences have a hashtag, jump into that hashtag stream by tweeting your interview. Use those interviews for blog posts weeks after the event.

If you exhibited at the event, create a way to capture conversations at the booth. Use those conversations as part of your follow up process. A little legal note here, you may need a wavier to use each person’s comments. If you had a member of your company speak at the event, grab video of their presentation, interview them and with one question per video taken. This will give you between 5 to 10 video soundbites that can be used in several forms after the event. This include:

• Tweets
• Blog Posts
• Presentations by sales
• Webcasts
• Video email messages

The next time you are on the road at a trade show remember, you may have plenty of video power right in your pocket. Use it. For more, catch up with me on a webcast Thursday, September 20 at 11 AM Central Time on integrating video in your social content marketing sponsored by Netbriefings, Register at http://bit.ly/videocaptures

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The image craze is in part due to the exceptional image capture capabilities of even the most common mobile devices. Images and our attraction to them are not unique to the mobile or social generation. Life, National Geographic and Playboy (not just for the articles) are among the most influential magazines of the twentieth century mostly because of their captivating images.

Today, Instagram is among the leading social image sharing sites and it is a platform for image expression. Tim Landis, is not a photographer by any formal training, but he is a quick study and has a creative eye. His work was covered in The Huffington Post and serves to illustrate how powerful images can hold a viewers attention. It’s a characteristic that businesses are tapping into across the social space.

Tim Landis, on Twitter as @curious2119, has a following of nearly 180,000 on Instagram.me

I reference some of Tim Landis’ photos in the podcast and they are on the Marketing Edge Blog page below.

Best ways to use images in a business and gain social status

• New products and gadgets
• Live events
• Food presentations
• Travel and interesting places
• Community and customer created content

Tim Landis highlights how Nike has built a following of nearly 500,000 on Instagram as it features athletes pro and amateur using its products. They are plugging into local events around the globe essentially making their instagram page a Nike World Tour so to speak.

I’m moderating a panel with Social Media Breakfast Twin Ports Tim Landis, and from Verizon Brent Nelson on how images are being used in social media marketing, Friday September 14 in Duluth, Minnesota.

The first photo uploaded to the web was of four women.

Today we are image crazy, do you understand!  CRAZY.  We are so crazy with images that there is an Instant Upload feature in smartphones that will upload upon taking the image to Google + after which you’ll have the option to share with your Google circles.

 

Crazy right?

How about this, there are more than 5 million photos uploaded to Instagram daily and growing.

Below is a chart of the growth of Flickr from 2008 to 2012 and it’s reached on average more than 1 million images daily.

Want to see something really crazy, especially if you are a Baby Boomer – Here’s what Kodak, yes Kodak, the company that knew pictures were not film and paper and lenses, but were memories; here’s what Kodak has on its website today in the midst of an image explosion.

  Kodak goes out of the digital capture business to focus on, get this, printing. Yes desktop ink jet printing.

Morale of the story?
1) Today look around, there’s content everywhere
2) It’s more important to realize why your company exists, not what it does

I can appreciate how difficult it must be for companies in the financial industry to incorporate social media. The medium that pushes companies to be human in the harsh environment of credit scores, stock price, and government regulations, can create conflicts in how companies can react in social environments.

Look, let’s face it. Just because a consumer complains about interest rates, late fees, and lack of functionality on websites like signing up for auto pay doesn’t mean they are going to consider each case as an individual would. Take it from personal experience and research, today’s financial consumer decisions affecting you are not done through the social media staffer handling your Tweet. The interest rate that you are paying is not going to be knocked down just because you make your case online.

The challenge then for financial companies is how to be a part of the conversation, attract attention and securing loyalty without giving an inch on the product you purchase – money. Consider that retailers are throwing discounts at consumers online compared to financial companies who really have less flexibility in pricing. You may say a financial company’s pricing flexibility is manifested in 0% offers. Sure, it does, but the fine print is the APR and other hidden fees. It’s not like a discounted price for a single one-time purchase item.

Content gets around the hard core discussion of specific issues and will have a softer appeal for the consumer. You’ve seen many of these content applications, for example articles about, interest rate calculators, and debt payment calendars. Then there is a typical series of “lifecycle” saving and planning content e.g. Saving for college, buy or lease your car, tips for saving for your dream vacation and “you’ve earned it” retirement planning.

American Express, Open Forum is a great example of embracing social and still being profit focused. As an American Express member since 1981 I know how they treat consumers or what they call members. There was nothing out of the ordinary about they way they handled my account, it was all by the numbers. Regardless of my relationship with American Express, which was a well above average payment history, that company was the least focused of all credit companies I dealt with on the human side of the relationship. American Express did however, use content and their open forum to create enormous amounts of content in support of debt-carrying consumers. They put a huge bet on the social community participating in their forum and why not, there was mutual interest in your article being carried on Open Forum. There are elements of this strategy that as a consumer are helpful, but as a customer and a marketer, I can see through the strategy and quite frankly I am not a fan of American Express. I do, however, acknowledge this strategy for content marketing is an advantage for them. For me as a dissatisfied American Express Member, it is a disconnect between the illusion of them caring about me and the reality of them caring about them.

The bottom line and what I don’t want you to miss out on is that content can help soften consumer/business relationships that are based on quantifiable characteristics and performance of the consumer. Content marketing is a way to deflect issues that are best not discussed in social circles, that still provide value for consumers, and will allow companies to build loyalty among socially active individuals.