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!

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.

Another topic for a future post

LOVE in the time of layoffs -- or, how to survive a marriage when you are home all the time in a small house!

Future Topics for Posts

• Social Networking -- A cool tactic, but exactly that, a tactic
• Over thinking it all
• What should we use, what should we watch, and what should we run from
• What is the next phase of marketing, and is it marketing?
• The Web, advertising medium, or a medium not for advertising (want fries with that?)
• Business vs. the consumer
• Short term vs long term