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Marketing Doubleshot Podcast – Ep.11 – Pinterest the Search Engine & Agencies Making Software

In this episode, Jonathan Barrick and Josh Muirhead discuss how Pinterest and its search mechanics combine with other key aspects of the platform to bring power to digital marketers, and a recent article about how marketing agencies should be taking a good hard look at software as a competitive differentiator.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

Pinterest – pinterest.com

25 Pinterest Stats, Facts & PR Best Practices – www.cision.com/us/2015/01/25-pin…r-best-practices/

Jim Dougherty – twitter.com/leaderswest

Why ad agencies need to become software companies – www.businessesgrow.com/2015/10/13/ad…re-companies/

Mark Schaefer’s {grow} blog – www.businessesgrow.com/blog/

Marketing Doubleshot Podcast – Ep.10 – Ad Blocking & Missing out on the Mobile Moment

In this episode, Jonathan Barrick and Josh Muirhead discuss the latest in digital ad blocking developments, and the ‘mobile moment’ that many brands and marketers are approaching from the wrong angle.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

The Verge – Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web – www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/933896…death-of-the-web

Mark Schaefer’s {grow} blog – www.businessesgrow.com/blog/

Luke Wroblewski – Product Director at Google – twitter.com/lukew – www.lukew.com/

Hotel Tonight – http://hoteltonight.com

Listen up! Here’s 10 top snippets from Social Slam!

by Jonathan Barrick

Social Slam 2013 has concluded, and that makes me sad. However, Social Slam 2013 was awesome, and that makes me happy. The content was brilliant, the speakers were tremendous, and the people were the best. Social Slam is without a doubt, a must-attend event for ANYONE working with digital tools, professionally or personally, to connect and communicate.

Scanning back through the countless tweets sent out during the event, there’s so much gold it’s clear that everyone walked away from the event energized and excited to get to work using new techniques and approaches to the digital space. Here is but a handful of the great content that was shared during Social Slam, but for those craving more, simply search for the #soslam hashtag on Twitter and immerse yourself!

“You’re not just competing with the guy down the street. You’re competing globally.” – @jeffbullas

My take: Jeff’s own presence at Social Slam after over 40hrs of exhaustive delay-ridden travel time reminds us all that there are no borders in social media. Forget about competing locally, and be awesome worldwide.

“Social levels the playing field for introverts and extroverts.” – @jeffbullas

My take: Your content isn’t judged based on how you act at cocktail parties. It’s judged based on its value. By creating great content, even the most meek and mild of us can become social superstars.

“Use your social media to tell your whole story: employees, community, environment.” @xanpearson

My take: Your story is not contained within your logo, your mission statement, or your brochure. It’s contained within the actions of every single one of your employees, customers, and partners. Use the power of social to share the entirety of your brand.

“Blog comments come from emotional reactions to your content. They need to WANT to share their take on your content.” – @dinodogan

My take: Dino reminds us that comments don’t appear simply because you wrote something. They appear because something ‘sparked’ inside the reader. An emotional impact triggers the desire to comment. Want comments? Write something that creates that ‘spark’.

“Community is at the heart of everything we do.” – @gabriellenyc

My take: Wow! What an INCREDIBLE talk this was. Gabrielle captivated the entire audience with her amazing stories and reminds us all that everything we do connects us to other people. Everyone we meet, shake hands with, share a laugh with, share a moment of sadness or of joy with, inevitably becomes part of our personal community. Social media amplifies this and makes our communities grow stronger, larger, and faster, stretching across the globe.

“You can’t teach how to blog unless you blog. You can’t teach Twitter if you don’t use Twitter.” – @markwschaefer

My take: In other words, if you want to be a great communicator, then you need to COMMUNICATE. Invest the time in learning the tools, honing your voice, and appreciating your audience. Becoming great in social takes time, and takes practise.

“Common sense is strangely uncommon most of the time.” @JeffBullas

My take: Think before you do. Read before you post. Choose your words wisely. Jeff’s statement is deceptively simple, yet speaks volumes. Many of those using social do so with very little forethought. Be smart about how you use social media, use care and caution, and pay attention to the perceptions of your audience. It matters.

“Automation isn’t evil. Use it right & save time. You can’t automate & then bail on your audience.” – @ChrisQueso

My take: Social media is not a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of media. It’s real-time, and is fuelled by interactivity and engagement. Using automation for certain repetitive tasks can be a huge time saver for many of us, but it does not mean that your social networks are now self-sustaining. It needs to have your personal interaction and attention, otherwise you’re just advertising.

“If all you’re doing is sharing mediocre content, you’re amplifying the suck.” – @jenkaneco

My take: ‘Meh’ content does not get retweeted. It does not get liked. It certainly doesn’t get commented on. Don’t just post for the sake of posting. Post because you’ve got something that is bursting at the seams with awesome. Deliver value, all the time, or your brand will be one big ‘meh’.

“It’s hard not to like someone once you know their story. – Mr. Rogers” – @ducttape

My take: Your story is your brand. Who you are, what you’re all about, what you do and why you do it. This is why people like you, this is why people like your company. Don’t seal up your story away from your community. Share it & be proud of it. Your community isn’t just listening to your story, it is an integral part of it.

In addition to being an event overflowing with great content, it was also one of the greatest networking events I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. Speakers did not run back to their hotel rooms or to the airport after their time on stage had concluded. They became part of the crowd, attending other sessions, and talking with everyone they could find. I was absolutely honoured to personally meet many of the brilliant headliners, had some truly brilliant conversations, and lots of fun hanging out at the pubs!

(So glad I got a chance to hang out with so many brilliant people, like Jeff Bullas & Gabrielle Laine Peters!)

My most profound thanks to Mark Schaefer for making this an incredibly valuable event that will undoubtedly influence attendees to go out to their various corners of the world and utilize the awesome lessons that were learned, and share these lessons with their own communities. I know that I’m already looking forward to Social Slam 2014!

http://soslam.com>

Who I want to meet at Social Slam, and why.

by Jonathan Barrick

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Ok, so the title of this post is a bit deceptive because ideally I would like to meet everyone at Social Slam because it sounds amazing, but that’s likely not possible in the span of a one-day event. So, here’s a handful of brilliant speakers that will be dishing out the awesome in Knoxville in April, and why I want to meet them face-to-face and shake hands.

Dino Dogan – Dino’s the founder of Triberr, a tool founded on the principle that awesome bloggers helping other awesome bloggers distribute awesome content is a great thing. Triberr is a brilliant way to expand the reach of your content. I’d like to ask Dino what the future might hold for content sharing tools like Triberr, and what he thinks about the negativity surrounding automated sharing methods.

John Morgan – John literally wrote the book on no-BS branding. ‘Brand Against the Machine’ is an inspiring read. It provides real-world examples of what it takes to build a powerful and distinct brand with passionate advocates. I’d like to ask John what his opinion is on the power of small brands vs big brands in the age of social. Does he believe the passion of small brand advocates can overpower the big dollars of major brands?

Kim Garst – Do you recognize the hashtag #youcandosocial? If so, you’ve most likely seen it attached to tweets from @kimgarst. Kim is a content machine, producing & curating tons of smart marketing and social business articles. I’d like to ask Kim what she believes the core social strategies should be for unknown or obscure business types that don’t necessarily have thriving or passionate customer bases.

Mark Schaefer – The guy who founded Social Slam, author of {grow} blog and the books ‘The Tao of Twitter’ & ‘Return on Influence’. He’s wicked smart and a class act. I was fortunate to have met him at an event in Toronto in 2012, and I’d like to shake the man’s hand again. I’m not sure exactly what I would ask Mark at this point. His thoughts on the ongoing ROI debate? His premonition on the fate of the ‘new’ MySpace? His views on who the up-and-coming superstars of social business will be? Perhaps by April 5th I will have it figured out.

I look forward to seeing what Social Slam delivers. By the look of the speaker lineup, it should be a pretty incredible day of great content and intense conversations. I would love to hear from any other people headed to Social Slam who they’re looking forward to meeting, and why! What has you fired up for the event?

Blogs of Greatness – Marketing Brilliance

How many blogs do you read? I mean, REALLY read? Regularly. How many can’t-miss, always-awesome, have-to-share blogs do you read?

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For me, there are just a handful. I peruse lots of them, and scan over even more, but the ones that I can say that I ‘read’ are limited to a select few that consistently deliver the goods that I can’t seem to get anywhere else.

I will state right now that yes, Seth’s Blog is great. We all know that, so let’s talk about something different.

Blog #1 – Mitch Joel‘s ‘Six Pixels of Separation’ – http://www.twistimage.com/blog/
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Mitch is one of those fantastic bloggers that not only gives you advice that you can deploy today, but also makes you really THINK about where we’re going with all this ‘marketing’ stuff. No two posts on Mitch’s nearly decade-old blog roll are the same. He does brilliant podcasts and interviews with the top thinkers & doers in business. I’ve seen Mitch speak live on more than one occasion, and I can say with certainty his blog delivers just as much personality in writing as he does in person. A truly great business blog that is my default go-to place when I’m looking for marketing inspiration.

Blog #2 – Sam Fiorella‘s ‘The Social Roadmap’ – http://www.senseiwisdom.com/Home/bID/3/
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Sam is all about results. Actual, measurable, results. If you can’t translate your actions in to a real benefit for your business, then WHY are you doing it? This is the question that Sam’s blog posts answer. One of the first things you’ll notice about the writing on the Social Roadmap is that it’s infused with passion. It’s a no-holds-barred assault on pretentious marketers who spew buzzwords and measure success based on what CAN happen instead of what DOES happen. Read this blog if you want to break through the BS and develop a plan that gives tangible results.

Blog #3 – Mark Schaefer‘s ‘{grow}’ – http://www.businessesgrow.com/blog/
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Mark is truly a great author, speaker, and thinker. His focus is, quite obviously, helping you and your business grow and thrive. Mark’s articles span a wide range of topics, but always seem to come back to a central, overriding theme of ‘Do It Right’. It’s not a matter of doing things because they’re new, shiny, or fancy. It’s a matter of doing them because it’s the right move for your business and for your customers. Mark is a true advocate of relationship building as the core of success. Those businesses that can forge the strongest relationships with their partners are the ones that will grow and thrive. Mark often brings in guest writers to shed a different perspective on certain topics, and only chooses those writers who hit the same high standard his readers have become accustomed to.

These three blogs are indicative of what I look for when searching for the latest and greatest in marketing thinking: Passion, diversity, experience. Too many blogs tell you what you already know, and not enough of them tell you what you need to hear. Bookmark these three, add them to your RSS reader, follow them on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or wherever you turn to for good stuff. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

So those are my top three, but what are yours? Where do YOU turn to for the ‘awesome’?

Return On Influence – A Book Review

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Whether you like it, love it or hate it, whether you agree or disagree with its philosophy or purpose, there’s no denying the fact that Klout and other social influence scoring sites are changing the way we all think about online influence and social media. This is the overarching theme of Mark Schaefer‘s latest book, “Return On Influence – The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing”.

There is a simple reason for the meteoric rise of social scoring sites like Klout, Peerindex, and the newest kid on the block, Kred. They promise to keep a running score on something that’s inherently elusive and extremely difficult to measure in any quantifiable way: How likely is it that you will affect behaviour and actions related to a specific topic?

It’s pretty easy to see why this would be valuable information to have. Being able to identify key influencers around specific topics would give businesses and individuals much greater ability to communicate precisely focused messages.

There is of course a great deal of debate around whether such a thing is actually measurable, and whichever side of that argument you fall on I’ll leave you to decide. Ultimately though, the perspective presented in this book will provide insight in to how the algorithms calculate influence scores, the different ways certain actions will affect your score, and how businesses are using these sites to their advantage.

Mark Schaefer does an excellent job in this book by looking at the popularity of Klout, PeerIndex and others as a simple reality of today’s online world. The bottom line is: These sites exist. If trends continue, it’s clear that they aren’t going away anytime soon, so you’d best understand what they do, how they work, and what they can mean for your business.

Schaefer presents both sides of the story through relevant anecdotes and personal experiences. You’ll hear stories of tremendous success along side stories of people gaming the system and being discriminated during job interviews because their scores aren’t high enough. You’ll also hear how social scoring companies like Klout are constantly working towards more effective measurements and minimizing the chance that the system can be gamed.

Social scoring is in its infancy, and as a result it’s sound advice to keep an open mind about it. Given the frequency with which new communication tools have appeared in recent years, I don’t think that anyone can guarantee a prediction about how the business of social scoring is going to play out. But this book gives clarity to some very muddy waters. Overall, Return On Influence is an excellent read, and it will certainly give you pause to rethink your position on influence scoring, regardless of whether your for it or against it.

Find ‘Return On Influence’ on Amazon

Note: This review was not solicited in any way, and my copy of Return On Influence was purchased.

This article originally written for http://crowdshifter.com

The Tao of Twitter – Book Review

The book I wish I had before I wrote my first Tweet.

Twitter can be a really hard sell sometimes. “Who wants to hear what celebrities had for lunch?”, “You can’t use something like Twitter for business.”, or “How can you say anything worthwhile in 140 characters?” are all questions that we’ve heard before, and some of us are even guilty of asking them. But the reality is far from this perception. Twitter is indeed a viable platform for business communication, professional networking, customer service, marketing, news, and more. Every day more and more people are realizing the positives from participating on Twitter. They are preaching its awesomeness from all corners of the globe, and yet there are still droves of people who still think it’s stupid, pointless, just for kids, or full of celebrity gossip.

So how do you break that stereotype and show them the reality? Well, Mark W. Schaefer, author of the {grow} blog, took action and wrote The Tao of Twitter. A book whose sole purpose is to smash the negative stereotypes that talk of Twitter as a ‘waste of time’, and show readers that the personal and business benefits you can achieve on Twitter are real and are far-reaching.

Rather than start off with the typical lists of terminology and mechanics, Mark begins the book with a funny little anecdote about when he had his ‘a-ha!’ moment on Twitter. A moment that we all have when we start using it. The precise moment when you realize what the potential is. He then moves to an example of a tangible business success that could only have come to him as a result of Twitter. This approach allows the reader to understand the whole point of Twitter in the first 10 pages, and see what it’s capable of, instead of getting immediately bogged down with dry definitions and acronyms.

From there, Schaefer proceeds to explain the three ‘Tao’s that ensure you’re developing a strong community. In summary, the keys are to ensure you follow a group of people that are providing good content, that you return the favour and share good content to your followers, and that you commit to being genuinely helpful to the community. Through these three activities you will begin to realize the full benefits of Twitter.

Only then, once he’s shown that YES it does work for business, does Schaefer begin to explain some of the essential common terminology, the basic mechanics of how to Tweet properly, and some of the best do’s/don’ts for both beginners and veterans alike. Mark also outlines a simple regimen for ensuring that your entire day is not devoured by Twitter, but you are still an active participant within your community.

Finally, the book discusses how to put all the concepts together, as well as some important competitive advantages that will come from using Twitter, and how some of the current influence benchmarks work and are being used. While far from perfect, these influence metrics are still important to be aware of, and you certainly won’t be able to ignore them for long.

Overall, I was quite impressed by this first book by Mark W. Schaefer. It tackles a key problem that businesses face when adopting Social Media, and uses real examples of successes, both personal and professional. The Tao of Twitter should be viewed as the handbook to become one of those Twitter users that people will actually WANT to follow. It’s the kind of book that you’ll read more than once, lend to your friends and colleagues, and will probably fill with post-it notes, highlighter marks, and dog-eared pages.

*NOTE: This review was not solicited in any way. My copy of the Tao of Twitter was purchased.