When Social Media Goes Right

So, once I ended my tenure at Starwood, I decided that for me to be successful, I needed to practice "personal distribution". What does that mean? "Burt", the brand, is about creativity, ideas, relationships. Since I believe that Social Media is a tactic, not a strategy, it was one of the tactics I employed for self promotion. My FaceBook account, LinkedIn account, blogs, twitter, youtube, flickr, etc all became ways for me to promote myself.

What has it gotten me? For one, a job at Knowledge Universe. On top of that, I have been a published photographer (http://amzn.to/cZ2MUE) in two books, and was most recently asked to speak to a group of 200 about Mountain Climbing. Its actually pretty incredible when you think about it. I have spent some time marketing myself, and not in push marketing. But, as people look for information, they are finding me!

The web offers a ton of free distribution. As we all know, anyone, or any brand, would be crazy not to take complete advantage.

Megatron, what I love about Social Media

My new favorite use for social media is the Facebook page, bit.ly/90I8jZ. The fan page was set up by a guy who obviously bet his sister that if he got 1 million fans, she'd have to name her unborn child Megatron. Well, it spread like fire. He is at 1.3 million as of today, 3/13. Whats amazing was the speed with which the page ramped up. I looked on Tuesday and it was in the 800k range. Every time I refreshed, it grew at least by 5k, usually more. Finally, by Friday, his sister was toast. Read the comments, highly entertaining. People demanding birth certificates, asking if the middle name will be skeletor, and having a good time.

Nice to know the tools exist to help give children ridiculous names!

Reasons for Being Delinquent on Postings

So, there really isn't a great reason why I haven't posted in a few weeks but I will try. I am in the midst of a few job interviews and have been traveling. I am very excited about the opportunities I am pursuing and hopefully the one I am most interested in will come to fruition soon.

Add to that my trip to Ecuador. I am leaving on June 20 to go climbing in Ecuador with the biggest mountain being Cotopaxi, at 19,347 feet. So between the interviewing, the traveling for interviewing, and getting into shape and getting ready for Ecuador I have been a little strapped on time.

I did however, at 12:01 am this morning, register www.facebook.com/burtrosen for my profile URL. Hopefully everyone registered their names. If not, go to www.facebook.com/usernames and do it now.

Welcome To Anyone Coming from My FaceBook Ad Campaign

Today I placed my first ad ever on behalf of myself on FaceBook. Its pretty cool. I targeted by age, by geography, by company, and had a host of other target filters available. I bid .25 on a CPC figuring low risk, and why not take any volume I can get? I am driving everyone here.

Its a 10 day campaign so I will let you know the results over the next 10 days! Want to try it yourself? Go to FaceBook and click on the advertising link on the bottom.

Lets see how the campaign works and thanks for visiting my blog!

Everything Communicates

As I have mentioned before, being laid off gives me great opportunity to talk to a lot of people and also to crystallize my own thoughts on a variety of topics.

I have been thinking a lot about social media; what it is exactly, how it fits in, how people use it, etc. What's apparent to me, is that social media is not an end, but a means. Its also very apparent that social media is not some online phenomenon, but online has developed the set of tools that make conversations easier and louder. One could argue that a conversation in class, at a bar, at work is a form of social media, but now those conversations can get very wide distribution through online tools.

The other thing that has become more obvious, is that with the advent of the online tools, EVERYTHING becomes marketing. Customer service is now as much of a marketing tool as advertising. A bad customer experience, can lead to a Tweet, FB Status, blog post, YouTube video etc about the experience.

So, EVANGELISM should now be a key objective, and the one that potentially drives social media use. In my opinion, ROI is nice from social media, but the value of it is the ability to "Democratize Your Distribution" and create brand evangelists with loud voices and broadcasting capabilities. The attribution (latency) period might be longer, but in the end, its more valuable.

All About Me -- Social Media

I have extensive experience leveraging social media on behalf of brands.

While at Starwood I led the development of the first hotel travel blog dedicated to travel content (as opposed to program content), www.thelobby.com. I developed and authored the vision and development of www.sheraton.com, built on user generated content and the first major brand to bet its success on its users (other brands used micro-sites). I was heavily involved in the measurement strategy around UGC on Sheraton.com to determine the impact of social media on hotel bookings. I have led numerous initiatives involving blogs, FaceBook, distributed content, guest and member engagement and research efforts to better understand how SPG members engage with social media. I furthered direct conversations with SPG members through a variety of means including webinars, phone calls, and a 3rd party frequent traveler site, www.flyertalk.

One of my last projects, although small, was a labor of love that highlighted all of the cool work we did at Starwood with a number of social media apps and other innovative platforms, www.room-51.com.

In addition to efforts on behalf of Starwood and others, I author two blogs, Tweet, am on FaceBook (friend me!), LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and others.

So enough about you, what do you think of me?

Being unemployed and "networking" (a term I don't like, not sure why) has been fun. I am meeting a lot of people and learning something new from everyone I speak to. One of the interesting suggestions I received lately is to put some narrative together on topics that would be of interest to potential employers and to showcase thoughts, examples of work, etc. So, I have started.

As time goes by, I might begin to intersperse some of those paragraphs within this blog. Just wanted to explain what "all about me" means when you see it as a post!

Please Feed the Animals and Social Media in the Age of Layoffs

I read an interesting article today in Ad Age about an Ad Copywriter that was laid off who started a blog, Please Feed the Animals whose mission is to "To eliminate the barriers between advertising agencies looking for talent and talent looking for work by providing a free online venue for professionals to showcase themselves online."

The tools available now are making organizing the unemployed way easier. For example, the day after I was laid off I started a group on FaceBook for all of the ex Starwood employees to chat, post jobs, support each other etc. Within a few days, there were a lot of jobs posted, a number of recruiters had joined, and people were finding people. Erik's blog offers the same kind of dynamic. LinkedIn has countless groups and recruiters have told me most of their days are searching on FB, LinkedIn etc for prospects.

Its nice to know that the days of being unemployed, alone and unsupported are quickly coming to a close.

Twitter vs FaceBook: When Tweeting Goes Good

So, why Twitter? Whats the value? Does everyone care what I am doing at 3 am? I read what other people write but for some reason, I think they care what I write. Maybe its out of boredom, maybe its out of a need to feel connected. Maybe its all about the ego?

I have added the Twitter app to my FaceBook page to streamline my micro-blogging efforts. The real question I have is for FaceBook given the Twitter app. It seems to me that FaceBook could "twitterize" their status and blow twitter away. If you could subscribe to a FB status in an RSS reader, you would never need to look at Twitter!

So, I guess what I am saying is that I am confused, so maybe I should focus on how I use each. I love Twitter's ability to keep me connected to companies that I am interested in. The Marriott, Starbucks, Jack in the Box and especially Zappos tweets are great. All written with personality and offering some insight or useful content.

FB is where I keep tabs on my friends. Its a great place to find out what people I care about are doing.

So, companies, take note. Twitter is a great platform for loyal customers to follow brands/companies they love. FaceBook is a great platform for loyal friends to follow those they have relationships with.

(One side note. For those of you that follow twitter, check out HangInThereJack.com. It chronicles the events that lead up to and include the critical injury sustained by Jack, spokes head for Jack in the Box. Its very entertaining and a little out there which makes it fun.)

The Death of TV? Or "Why would we ever speak to each other again?"

So, the world is obsessed with social media (ok, I am obsessed with social media). Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Whats interesting is that the world also seems to want to talk about the death of television.

Raise your hand if you watched the Super Bowl? Raise your hand if you watched the Office afterwards?
Now raise your hand if you discussed either with anyone else.

My theory? TV and televised content drive a lot of the "conversations" that take place across the social networks. Think about it. How many "tweets" are tweeting during the Super Bowl? During the Oscars? Even during the Golden Globes or SAG awards? How many FB statuses were changed to reflect some element of the Super Bowl last night?

I spoke on a panel once where the person before me talked about the death of TV in an era of DVRs and the web. It continues to drive me crazy! My first question on the panel was how many people watched Entourage? Almost all hands shot up. The second question was how many discussed it with someone else? Almost all hands shot up.

The point is, things like TV drive social media and provide fodder for micro blogging, blogging, video uploads, music, photos, etc.

So, is TV dead? I think not. Just ask Michael Scott.

The Agency of the Future

I think most people would agree that in marketing, we are in an age of specialization. There are agencies for offline advertising, direct response, online, social, media, creative, web 2.0, etc. There is a tremendous opportunity for a new breed of agency, built on a new financial model, to look at Marketing holistically and determine how to use what tactic, at what time, with what message to best engage the consumer. (Some agencies do exist that subscribe to my theory, but they are still of smaller scale.)

Imagine, as a client, writing a brand strategy or a creative brief for a new campaign and seeing all the ways to engage consumers at once; off line and online advertising to drive awareness, DR advertising to drive sales, social networking to give consumers the ability to discuss, and search for all of the above. And of course, a measurement plan that tracks it all as one effort. It might be a dream, but it is becoming more and more possible.

More on this to come, but it was on my mind. I am interested in any comments from people on the topic.

Social Networking: Is it a strategy a tactic, a buzzword or a desert topping?

So much is made out of social media, social networking, social this and social that lately that its tough to get away from it.

The evolution of tools that allow companies to speak directly to their consumers and allows their consumers to speak to each other is incredible. As a marketing person, its like a dream to be able to ask a consumer about something and get an immediate reaction. Not only does it help to optimize marketing, promotional, customer service and product development, but it allows the consumers to feel more intimately involved with the process. Thus (and I love that word) creating evangelism, the holy grail of marketing.

All that being said, should you have a social networking strategy, or a brand strategy of which social networking is a tactic? My opinion? Everything should come out of a brand strategy. Social networking is very valuable when placed with in the right brand context. Social networking for social networking sake has failed many times.

Take a look at your brand and determine the types of communications and vehicles that reenforce your brand's promise and more importantly, the consumer's expectation of your brand. A handmade luxury automaker doesn't make sense on Facebook!

Just one man's opinion.