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

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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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Why Most People Fail in Social Media

October 13, 2010

Tools are a wonderful part of today’s information age, but if you’re going to use “social networks” or that thing we call “social media,” it’s important to remember the common denominator: the social. Without an understanding of your community and an understanding of the influencers, you’re destined for failure. There’s no question about it.

Networking is the key component for social media success

Social networks become popular because of the people using them. Social media “experts” recommend Twitter and Facebook because they know there’s a critical mass there to reach a desired audience. Of course, there are other sites, but these individuals know one thing: that there are people there who are willing to listen, just as long as you are willing to make a true effort to interact. You need to work to see results.

Even experts do not always understand this critical fact.

George, a representative of a UK social media agency, emailed me last month to tell me to check out his company’s blog. He also made the request that I link to his site with “social media agency [companyname]” if I ever like what I see.

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Social Media Insecurity: What to do When Online Activity Affects Your Offline Relationships

August 18, 2010

As social media enthusiasts, we often forget that we live in a different type of world than everyone else. We might be more keen to open up to strangers and share our feelings with people we don’t know. It’s the world we’re living in — for us, at least, and it will continue as we spread these ideas to our peers and colleagues, all of whom will likely slowly open up to this world in due time. All paths will ultimately lead to here whether or not these “outsiders” have chosen to accept it yet.

I can empathize with the holdouts. I have family members who are really confused with how omnipresent I seem online, but at the end of the day, they take pride in that. My uncle knows a young girl from his community, a recent college graduate, who is looking for a social media job. When she found out I was his niece, she became ecstatic. I told her to reach out and I embraced the opportunity to help her. (If you’re hiring for entry level in NYC, let me know and I’ll pass on her info!). Meanwhile, I did my uncle proud. Social media is about helping one another and building real strong friendships, usually around a certain interest or activity.

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Is Social Media Becoming Boring?

April 14, 2010

For most, social media is new and fun. For others, though, social media is old and is falling out of favor. I’m seeing it happen of users who were happy about social media when it became hyped but are now realizing that they’re not yet ready to hold onto social media any longer. It’s boring, too challenging, and uninteresting. Catering to individuals seems to mean you need to bend to their will at every turn. Nobody wants to have to to a minority that seems to be unhappy with the content you’ve spent hours upon hours writing.

Social media experts are no longer social media experts. They’re moving onto “bigger and better.” Here’s why.

Social Media is a Trend

Wait, what? Social media is here to stay. However, to some, social media is a fleeting trend. That’s because social media marketing experts found success early on since social media relationship building was simply easier. Back then, companies who were engaged were genuinely involved because they wanted to build strong valuable relationships. They weren’t there to push a marketing agenda. Users were more trusting because they could be. Consequently, the early adopters persevered.

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Blogging Etiquette in the Face of a PR Pitch: What Miss Blogging Manners Would Do

February 10, 2010

As a blogger, I’m sure you receive a fair number of emails pitching you with products. As someone who does public relations for companies, I’m sure you carefully pick your bloggers for the pitch. We both have difficult jobs. Bloggers have to weed out the crap and PR pros need to find the right people for the job.

The job of someone who does blogger outreach can be difficult. They’re tasked with contacting bloggers about different initiatives, sending out story ideas and “press releases” (hopefully with a social component, since those are preferred by many bloggers). Unlike traditional journalists, if you’re doing blogger outreach, your focus should be a lot more on relationship building with the right people.

It’s not always the people doing blogger outreach who don’t get it right. Public relations representatives sometimes actually do a great job sending targeted pitches to the right people. They invest a lot of time finding just the right bloggers, carefully cherry picking out the right people to whom to send a perfect pitch. These are the people who really make a solid effort — they review the blog content and realize that their pitch might be a further extension of content that they had already seen on the blogs they are targeting.

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