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

From the category archives:

Social Media

Why Hiring a Marketing Department Has Changed—5 Subjects a Business Owner Must Now Consider in Every Interview

November 16, 2011

This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro.

Many current CEOs and business owners often have more to worry about than the 50 ways social media can drive traffic to a website or the 100 ways to help improve a website’s page ranking. In other words, they have more to worry about than trying to keep up with the latest and greatest marketing tactics. However, CEOs and business owners do have to worry about hiring new employees.

As early as seven years ago, hiring a marketing department was fairly simple. You first get a background check, then you ask about their past experiences, how they plan to use commercials and newspapers to advertise, how they plan to measure success, etc., and the interview was over. Today, there are many new marketing outlets that a CEO has to take into consideration when trying to find a marketing professional who can keep up. In some cases, a good candidate may not have much experience with the latest tactics simply because they are so incredibly new. Marketing in today’s world is a little bit like being on a roller coaster. Everyone, no matter what age or point in their career, is along for the ride. This interviewing process has, therefore, become very tricky.  To make matters worse, many CEOs and business owners are not up on the latest best practices themselves, so how can an interview go successfully?

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Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog

November 2, 2011

This is a guest post by Preston Ehrler.

As a business owner, do I really have time to blog?  I’m a business owner too, and I realize that we are already pressed to our limits for time.  We are responsible for everything, including finding new business, working with our existing customers, interfacing with suppliers, running our books, and infinitely more.  Attempting to convince a business owner that we should add yet another task can understandably seem like a herculean endeavor.  For anything that is going to take more time, the rewards must be tangible and immediate.  As many of us cannot clearly identify what the rewards are that can be reaped by blogging, it is not placed high on the list of priorities.  It should be.

So, you ask, how important could blogging really be for my business?

My answer:  Instead of spinning out a list of theories we’ve heard again and again, what if we looked at blogging from a different perspective?  Employing a new paradigm by utilizing real data, what can we learn about how blogging, coupled with an effectively constructed website, can affect your company?  What, specifically, can we extrapolate?  How do we know blogging is worth the effort?

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Why Most Social Media Departments Fail

October 25, 2011

A few years ago, a colleague of mine was given a tremendous responsibility to oversee the social media department at a prestigious well known NYC-based public relations firm. Less than a year later, she was sent packing up her desk, a casualty of a company that jumped into that shiny toy syndrome that people call social media.

As more companies jump into social media, they, too, hear that “social media departments don’t execute” which results in the failure of a social media department that was never meant to be. I’ll be exploring some of those reasons below.

Goal Setting

You could be the biggest and most well-paid social media consultant out there, but if you don’t know what the specific goals are for the client project, you should never sign an agreement with the prospective company. A recent statement of work I encountered read just like this:

  • Manage and grow the our following on Twitter
  • Manage and grow our fan base on Facebook
  • Manage and grow our fan base on LinkedIn
  • Possibly manage the presence on other platforms
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How Social Media is a Lot Like Dating

October 11, 2011

This is a guest post by Shannon Evans Suetos.

Social media, like many things in life, is about relationships. If you don’t build a great relationship (online or offline), you won’t accomplish much. That said, how is social media like dating? You can apply “proper dating etiquette” to just about every aspect of social media.

Don’t Just Talk About Yourself

Ever been on a first date and realize you couldn’t get one word in? I think most of us have. Even if you started the conversation, some people can always make it about them. It’s not fun on a date, and it certainly isn’t fun to listen to someone on Twitter only talk about themselves.

This is where many social media newbies can miss the boat. Using Twitter and Facebook to promote a blog post is great, but make sure to mix it up with other news and topics as well. Using social media as a tool to position yourself or company as an expert is how you are going to gain your followers’ trust.

Tweet industry news as well as your company’s current events. It’s okay to not talk about yourself — your followers will thank you. You might even get a re-tweet or share for doing so.

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How to Show the World the True Rock Star You Are: 3 Social Media Bragging Techniques

October 4, 2011

This is a guest post by Amy Porterfield.

Selling yourself is hard.

But it’s next to impossible to thrive in a world that’s hyper-engaged if you refuse to bust out of your shell and, well—brag a little.

That’s right: brag.

Bragging is a way to prove you know your stuff. As a good friend of mine says, “If you don’t brag with specificity, authenticity and passion, no one will ever know what a true rock star you are.”

Social media is an ideal platform to carve out a niche and own your territory. But there’s a very fine line between bragging with “specificity, authenticity and passion” and coming off like a self-absorbed egomaniac (or a used car salesman).

Below are three steps to bragging better—so you can stand out, inspire and build deeper relationships online.

#1: True Rock Stars Show—They Don’t Tell

People who brag well online lead with their expertise, not with a sales pitch.

Or like your English teacher used to say, they practice “show, don’t tell.”

In a very noisy online world, your goal is to inspire your market to sit up and take notice of you. You want them to connect, deeply, with your value proposition. But words only go so far.

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