From the monthly archives:

July 2010

Thoughts on Community, Particularly Seattle’s

by Jason Falls · July 30, 2010

I spent a few days in Seattle this week and was sincerely overwhelmed. Though I was jokingly told I came for its annual one week of summer, the weather, the people, the Social Media Club, the community … everything about the trip was perfect.

Typically, I don’t blog about the trips I take. I take far too many of them, am not a travel blogger and me talking about what I’m doing has to be monumentally boring for you, as Twitter-esqe as that concept might be.

But Seattle is one of those communities that when you walk away, you think, “I’ve got to tell people about this place.”

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15 comments

A New Chapter In Personal Brands

by Jason Falls · July 28, 2010

This is Frank Eliason‘s last week at Comcast. The poster boy for leveraging social media for customer service and, in the process, turning around a struggling company’s image, will no longer be @ComcastCares on Twitter. Eliason is moving on to Citi where he will head up their social media efforts.

On the surface, it’s a neat, new plum job for a great guy who is a leader and pioneer in corporate social media. But there’s a lot more to the story because it writes another chapter in the personal vs. company brand playbook.

Frank Eliason - Voluntweetup
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36 comments

Will Your Company Introduce Your Baristas?

by Jason Falls · July 26, 2010

In the past two weeks, I’ve been asked a version of the same question about four times. The questions came from decision-makers at three companies/brands and one advertising agency. The question was generally this one:

Why on Earth would we allow our employees to openly represent us online?

Yes, all you social media purists out there, there are still non-Kool-aid drinkers amongst us. In fact, 90 percent of the world is still old school about marketing and communications. Keep on Kumbaya-ing with your “l love your blog” crowd. The rest of us will do the hard work.

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37 comments

Forrester Report Offers Analyst Look at Social Media ROI

by Jason Falls · July 21, 2010

Forrester Research has produced another interesting report, this one focusing on perhaps the hottest topic of the social media world over the past year: The ROI of Social Media Marketing. The piece, primarily authored by Forrester analyst and friend Augie Ray, offers what Forrester calls a balanced scorecard for measuring the ROI of social media, complete with expected Forrester graphics and interview-based insights.

Measurement unit
Image via Wikipedia
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23 comments

It’s Not About Influence, It’s About Trust

by Jason Falls · July 19, 2010

If you did a tag cloud on what was being bounced around the social media echo chamber in the last 14 days, the word “influence” would probably be the largest. Yes, even larger than “Old Spice.” Whether it’s the sadly lacking Fast Company Influence Project or the various voices in the social world trying to defend or attack it, we’ve suddenly become obsessed with measuring influence, finding out who is influential and figuring out how to generate influence.

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70 comments

What Fuels Your Passion?

by Jason Falls · July 16, 2010

This week I had the honor of spending a couple days with Chris Barger and his team, along with several brand team members at General Motors. I was really taken with the passion and excitement many of the folks there had for what they were doing and want to do with social media marketing. From the refreshing resurgence that has the Buick team chomping at the bit to carry their momentum forward to the I-cannot-wait-to-get-people-in-this-car frenzy of the Chevy Volt team, you could just sense an energy at GM that probably hasn’t been there in a while.

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28 comments

Social Media First From K-Mart? Yep. K-Mart.

by Jason Falls · July 12, 2010

Got a hot tip yesterday that this was coming. Kmart announced today during #gamerchat an interesting new (and likely industry and retail first) social media effort to bridge their online gaming community at MyKmart.com with off-line retail activity. Starting today, qualified reviews of games posted at MyKmart.com may start appearing along with the reviewed game on store shelves.

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31 comments

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone, Or Else

by Jason Falls · July 12, 2010

Everyone lives in a bubble to a certain degree. Maybe you call it a comfort zone. Perhaps you don’t call it anything but stay locked in, blinders on, to your industry, company or job.

The social media world is very much a bubble. And too much of one in my opinion. Consultants, practitioners, bloggers and enthusiastic agency types sit around in a big circle jerk telling each other how much they love each other’s blogs and hash-tagging the crap out of useless drivel on Twitter all day.

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56 comments

Listening Isn’t Hard. Neither Is Reading.

by Jason Falls · July 9, 2010

On July 2, I poked around Nielsen’s website trying to find a simple piece of information. Since I could not find it, I decided these Nielsen people were probably smart and had a website form for people to fill out when wanting to ask questions. They did have one. I filled it out. It contained the following information:

Six days later, I received the response:

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8 comments

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