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Photo Credit: www.facebook.com/oreo

Ah yes, the hazy, lazy days of summer, when marketing slips into a heat-induced coma. The pace seems a little slower, the controversies a bit duller and social media just plain boring.

Even the Olympics, that quadrennial bastion of sports and marketing, aims to muzzle its social media armed athletes to assure their tweets, status updates and photos are only happy, happy.

But fear not, several companies failed to get the memo and are stepping up their game in flagrant disregard of the trend. While other brands are stretched out on a hammock in hopes of a cool breeze, a few hardy souls have tightened the laces on their running shoes.

These are the brands that have followed guidance from experts like the Altimeter Group. In case you haven’t read their guidance, and you should, Altimeter suggests that companies go through something of a process as they move into social media and content creation. They compare this actualization process to a runner. Continue Reading

Let’s get something straight, your privacy online doesn’t mean squat to marketers. And while we’re handing out head slaps understand this, the vast majority of money they’ll spend on advertising is a complete waste.

Have I got your attention? Good, because quite honestly I’m getting tired of all the hand wringing from privacy advocates and self-anointed business experts over the twists and turns at Facebook. Let’s start with the privacy nonsense.

The latest paranoia has to do with confusions over what it means to your profile that Facebook is now a publicly traded company. In fact far too many profiles I see are slapping up a couple paragraphs of quasi-legal speak that conclude “The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law. UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE.” Continue Reading

Good morning class, time for a pop quiz. These news items recently caught our attention: P&G shifting money from marketing to social media. And GM walking away from advertising on Facebook.

Question: Are these events contradictory or complimentary? Discuss.

Ok, pencils down. The answer, class, is that they are complimentary. If you answered otherwise please go back and review the last 15 years of digital evolution. If you got the answer correct, then what are you doing about it? Continue Reading

PRYOR, Oklahoma – If you’re looking for a perfect lesson in how to master CRM in the digital age drop by the Mid-America Grill, along U.S. Highway 69, more than 250 miles from the nearest big city. You can also get a pretty good New York Strip while you’re there.

I certainly wasn’t looking for marketing strategy when I ran into the grill. Actually I was trying to escape a hellacious Oklahoma thunderstorm, the kind where the sky takes on unnatural colors and the rain is moving sideways. But what I got was a lesson on how easy it really can be to connect with your customers. Continue Reading

You’ve got to feel for professionals in the financial services industry. All the world is talking about the power of social media for marketing professional services, but there is a seeming mountain of regulations standing between them and an active Facebook page.

And yet who better to ride the wave of social media than a breed of individuals who have the ability to talk to people about the most sensitive issue we have, money. The problem is there’s a very tricky line that financial services professionals have to toe or risk falling into a world of trouble.

The Wall Street Journal defined the line quite nicely.

“It’s one thing for a baker to crow about his cupcakes on Facebook or for an athlete to talk trash about an opponent on Twitter. It’s something else entirely for an adviser to talk business online; there are rules, after all, that govern advisers’ public communications, to protect investors from being misled. And nuance—so crucial when discussing money and investing—can be lost in the social-media world.” Continue Reading

Savvy brands will seize the opportunity to swear off banner advertising in favor of building engagement with users on Facebook’s platform.

Facebook has established itself as a powerhouse of marketing for brands around the world. But it has provided brands relatively few tools to build meaningful connection with the more than 845 million users. Ad formats are small with minimal room for branding and measurement is restricted to a few metrics that Facebook opts to report.

To date, most of the innovation demonstrated by brands on Facebook has come from adapting formats and tools created for fans wanting to share the source of their enthusiasm. That is changing now as Facebook brings its new timeline format to brands. Indeed, the very nature of the new timeline format provides platform for brands to build powerful new ties with their advocates and reach out to new fans. Continue Reading

The reality of this new environment is that speed equals emotion. Logic gets left on the curb when messages are passed along in tweets and status updates.

What do these things have in common: Netflix, Bank of America, SOPA, Susan G. Komen for the Cure?

Answer: they’ve all got tread marks on their backs from social media protests.

The last six months have provided an amazing string of case studies on how protests movements are being changed forever by the speed and reach of social media.

Forget about organizing workers to gather signatures on a petition, or emails calling for a boycott of some company’s product. Those are your grandfather’s protest tools. Today’s protests take shape in a matter of days, and the battles can pivot in a matter of minutes. Gone are colorful posters with catch slogans. Today the canvases are short emotional messages with hash tags or links. Continue Reading

Think forward a couple years. Is it possible your debit card will be from the Facebook National Bank? What about that proof of insurance in your car, will it be from LinkedIn National?

Laugh if you will, but there’s good reason to see banking and insurance in the near future for social network. Gartner Research analysts dig in deep on the possibility in their industry predictions for 2012. Actually their prediction is that at least one of the social networks, likely Facebook, would be active in the financial services field by 2014.

So what’s going to move Facebook from global water cooler to financial services giant in just two years? You. Well, actually you and the other 800 million users who are laying bare your lives.

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