From the monthly archives:

July 2011

Getting The Most From Your Hired Help

by Heather Rast · July 8, 2011

Ever find yourself in need of a freelancer or consultant? Someone who specializes in whatever the weak link is in your operations or marketing? The last thing you want to do is work yourself up into a lather and waste time trying to figure out how to configure a SQL database when you could be making and shipping the stuff that actually generates revenue.

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15 comments

A Shout Out To Cliquet – Photo Sharing For Cliques

by Jason Falls · July 7, 2011

Wanted to make sure you saw one of our sponsors here at Social Media Explorer. This month, the individual page posts include an advertisement for CliqueIt, which is a photo sharing application for Android phones. It’s currently in Beta and I would imagine based on the popularity of the app, that other platforms may be coming soon.

The way it works, as I understand it, is that you create public or private cliques (think circles of friends) who you want to share photos with. Perhaps its your Ya-Yas, a group of co-workers, your drinking buddies, etc., and without having to use some third-party site to upload and host, you can share photos with them on the fly. The concept is interesting and I can see some applications for both work and play.

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2 comments

Four C’s for Community Cultivation

by Ike Pigott · July 7, 2011

I have a friend who is building a nice niche community around natural hair. While not entirely new to communications or even blogging, she was new to the concept of building an intentional audience. She asked me for suggestions, and this is what I shared with her:

Four C’s to build a community

1) Content

If you don’t have content, you won’t bring any new value. Concentrate on building out your content in the proportions that matter to your intended audience. You may have a lot to say about a particular niche, but odds are you won’t be able to grow until you widen it out further.

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30 comments

When You Are Not Their Boss

by Eric Brown · July 6, 2011

I am starting to rethink about our whole social media strategy approach for small businesses. Not so much with our own companies, but for our clients. It has taken me an inordinate amount of time to discover the constraints of “not being their boss,” something consultants and agencies a like are challenged with constantly.

I have spent most of my marketing life on the other side, as the buyer of marketing and branding services. In an odd chain of events over the last several years, that has shifted to the consultant and marketing studio side. I have wrongly made the assumption that when we sold the marketing ideas and strategy to the boss’s boss, the gal or guy at the top of the pyramid and the person paying the bill, all was well. Not really, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

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10 comments

The First Step In Creating A Social Media Content Strategy

by Ilana Rabinowitz · July 6, 2011

A question that new users of social media often ask is, “I hear that content is king, but what kind of content should I be producing?”  The conventional wisdom in marketing is: first figure out your objectives, then plan a strategy and finally develop the tactics.  Then, the theory goes, you get customers — and that’s when you take care of them.  After all, look at the time, effort and money you spent.  Of course you have to show them you care, or you’ll lose your valuable assets!

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33 comments

Is Radio Becoming Social?

by Jason Falls · July 5, 2011

Caught wind last week of a fairly interesting announcement that made me take pause and wonder if traditional media, in this case, radio, is starting to come around to the whole social thing. My buddy Jessica Northey has joined the nationally syndicated “Tony and Kris In The Morning” radio show as online correspondent. She will create something they’re calling a “Digital Daypart” for the show. It was officially announced today.

To spell it out a bit more clearly: A nationally syndicated radio show has hired a blogger/Twitter personality to be their online extension, giving the morning show a virtual presence beyond that of manufactured Twitter feeds and news release link drop accounts many traditional media are guilty of.

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32 comments

Managing Social Media In A Small Shop

by Jason Falls · July 5, 2011

My first director’s position as a public relations pro was as the Sports Information Director at Georgetown College, a small, NAIA-affliliated, liberal arts college in Kentucky. While my job was primarily to publicize the school’s athletics athletics teams, being a sports information director is so much more than PR. You are the official historian, web master, graphic designer, photographer, statistician, event manager and sometimes facilities supervisor on top of the media and public relations duties. While each institution has varying degrees of staffing, support and responsibilities relative to those areas, the smaller the school, the more responsibility the SID has.

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4 comments

Let’s Put The Expert Topic To Rest, Shall We?

by Jason Falls · July 4, 2011

I’m awfully tired of the “expert” conversation. It first popped up in early 2009 and hasn’t died since. Social media echo chamber sounding boards rant and rave about who’s qualified to help companies with social media and who isn’t. A fair amount of the conversation is ego driven with consultants and agency types puffing out their chests and client case studies trying to prove their Twitter dick is bigger.

The one group of people who don’t care about the expert conversation? Clients. They don’t hire idiots. And if they do, they learn from it and move on.

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17 comments

Stelzner’s Launch Presents Solid Ideas For Business Success

by Jason Falls · July 1, 2011

Over the weekend I came to a near record in minimal time spent to read an entire book, cover-to-cover. Michael Stelzner’s Launch: How To Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition is one of those books I was excited to get in the mail for a couple reasons. First, Mike is a friend and seeing a friend’s hard work come to fruition in something tangible like a book is a good feeling. Almost as importantly, though, I knew the book would have some good ideas in it. Social Media Examiner, Mike’s blog, and his subsequent online events have kicked everyone’s ass, including mine, in the last couple years. So I wanted to see how many secrets he would share.

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8 comments

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