Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

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From the monthly archives:

July 2009

The Importance of Networking on the Internet

July 27, 2009

This post is a little personal in nature, but I’m sure if you read through the end, you’ll enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed telling it. In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell this story for nearly two years.

In the last few years, I’ve taken the liberty of doing more than just blogging — I’ve been trying to get to know the people who have inspired me most (and that list isn’t cumulative!). I don’t necessarily expect to meet with those folks immediately; often, these powerful relationships are formed online, and I then try to learn what I can about the blogger himself/herself and follow up, normally at a conference or industry event. I do my best to put a face to a name — a face that I can see beyond just a digital format.

But sometimes there are surprises in every single meeting.

I decided one day to read more about self-improvement and marketing blogger, Jonathan Fields (and author of Career Renegade). The date was December 12, 2007, and I was excited to hear that Jonathan was a New Yorker like me. According to his blog’s “About” page at the time, you could find him simply by screaming his name in the very large Bryant Park in Manhattan. You know, with 8 million people living in NYC, you’d think this is no big deal, but there’s more to the story.

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Why Customer Service Should Be in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

July 21, 2009

If you’re reading this article, it should be clear to you that people use social media — like this very blog post — as a way to broadcast their thoughts and feelings, be them positive or negative. Blogs can also convey information, share ideas, and chronicle important lifetime milestones. In today’s day and age, it is incredibly easy for a person to set up his personal web space to start sharing whatever is on his mind (and you begin to wonder why Twitter’s growth is so huge and popular among celebrities?)

With social media — or quite frankly, the existence of the Internet, any misstep you make in your personal dealings with others can become public. And this is why customer service is incredibly important, even if the customer service dealings are entirely handled offline.

Social media is social.

It’s easy for people to tweet about bank robberies and to photograph live displays of computer errors in public places. Do you think it’s harder for people to rant about your screw-ups?

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A Brief Introduction to The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web

July 15, 2009

After years of trial and error and months of writing, The New Community Rules (O’Reilly link | Amazon link) has been released, and I wanted to dive into some of the concepts I discuss in the book, many of which I hope to explore in depth in future blog posts.

The New Community Rules talks about the important role social media has begun playing in our lives. Most importantly, however, is the role the emerging technology puts on the business owner who is tasked with finding out how to make an impact in this evolving landscape. We’ve seen that individuals nowadays don’t sift through their Yellow Pages to find a local business (nor do many people even own such a big book any longer); they turn to the Internet for help. By using the power of search, they are able to find what they want or would be reasonably happy with.

Search alone, however, isn’t cutting it. What if, on the first page of search results, you discover that people are very disappointed with the business? What if someone can’t stop singing praises about the product she just bought? If you’re looking at buying a product or utilizing a service, chances are you’re looking for the sentiment about that product or service as well.

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