From the monthly archives:

March 2012

Do You Have an Image Problem? Here Are 3 Ways to Solve That!

by Adam Helweh · March 30, 2012

A picture is worth a thousand words right? Then why do we depend so much on writing word after word, sentence after sentence and hope that words alone will communicate the message we want to deliver? In many cases we rely on our words to stand on their own and forget the power of images to reinforce our message or an experience.

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8 comments

When Good Email Goes Bad

by Jason Falls · March 29, 2012

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Megan Feltes, a member of the content team for the email marketing and communications company Emma.

How to deal with mistakes, failures and assorted slip-ups

Email may ultimately be sent and tracked by machines and robots, but it’s still a human endeavor at heart. And as such, email is vulnerable to human error. B2B campaigns are no exception, and errors in emails to customers can feel especially magnified. No matter how many times you read (and re-read) your email copy, a mistake may sneak through. It could be a simple misspelling or a glaringly incorrect link. Did 6,000 recipients see the wrong event date on your email invite? Yikes. Or you could do everything perfectly, but still experience unexpected fallout. Did your website crash after a free shipping offer caused a mad rush? Double yikes. While possibly embarrassing and humbling, mistakes are not the end of the world. Email’s strength lies in its innate timeliness and flexibility.

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7 comments

Insights from 11 million consumer conversations

by Jason Falls · March 29, 2012

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Tara DeMarco, who works as the Social Specialist at Bazaarvoice. 

In a few clicks, today’s social consumer can wield more influence, over more people, and in more ways than past consumers could ever have hoped for. The collective influence of billions of consumers interacting with people and things online leaves behind a trail of archivable, analyzable social data.

In our latest Conversation Index, Bazaarvoice analyzed over 11 million pieces of this social data to understand the people behind it. Here are some of the insights we uncovered, with tips for capitalizing on them.

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3 comments

Rise of the Twitter Teenager

by Stephanie Schwab · March 28, 2012

As I was sitting at Jason Falls’ SxSW party on a rainy night in Austin, waiting for a friend, I checked Twitter. I was wondering what was trending from SxSW.

The #1 trending topic on Friday night was this: #GetAustin2Philly.

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11 comments

Five (Serious) Tips for Using Humor to Connect, Engage, and Influence

by Mark Ivey · March 28, 2012

If social media is really like a dinner party, it seems like we’re missing something … humor.

Humor is one of the most effective-and under-appreciated tactics in communications. This applies to every day business discussions, professional presentations, and yes, social media. Look at Pinterest. Some of the most popular pins are funny or offbeat. Twitter and Facebook is even better. Who can’t resist a clever or funny tweet, or conversation starter?

Good humor works because it connects with people at an emotional level. We live in a very serious world. Humor provides us a mental break. For companies, it’s a great way to come across more engaging and naturally-more human.

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17 comments

Helpful E-Book Clarifies Facebook Timeline Best Practices

by Jason Falls · March 27, 2012

We don’t typically offer up blog posts to other people’s e-books and the like at SME. We’ve got our own online learning community for stuff that that, after all. When we do, you should know they’re pretty good.

My friend Shashi Bellamkonda turned me on to Hy.ly’s free ebook on using the new Facebook Timeline to get conversions and even return. I read through it and thought it was good enough to share. You do have to register to get it, but it’s free.

Check out hy.ly’s offer, appropriately made through their Facebook page here.

Permanent link to this post (96 words, estimated 23 secs reading time)
3 comments

How I Created a Ghost Town on the Web

by Andrew Hanelly · March 27, 2012

One of the most satisfying experiences is having a website take off in popularity.

People are linking to you and sharing your stuff, responding to your emails, spending time and leaving comments, and in some cases opening their wallets.

It’s a love train of feel-good moments, back-patting, fist bumps and fist pumps.

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of this a few times.

ghost-town

Image by Allie Caulfield

But I’ve also been on the other side of the proverbial digital media tracks. In the area where you roll your windows up, put your head down and wait for it to be over. In a ghost town on the web.

It happened again on a recent lark of a side project where I didn’t take my own advice and ended up making some stupid mistakes.

Fueled (and blinded) by my own idea, I killed my last blog before it truly had a chance to live. Here are the lessons I learned:

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7 comments

Understanding Digital Branding

by Jason Falls · March 26, 2012

There’s an overabundance of chatter on marketing blogs and websites these days about branding. Brand this, branding that … most of the people spouting it off are referring to marketing but don’t realize it. They use the word “brand” because they had a meeting once with an account planner at an advertising agency who said something about “branding” and it seemed smart. So they added it to their tradespeak.

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3 comments

Customer Service Isn’t An Act. It’s A Trait.

by Jason Falls · March 26, 2012

Nichole Kelly is not just a writer for Social Media Explorer, but a business partner of mine. While we’re still working out the details of what that relationship means so that we can announce it publicly, but it’s safe to say she and her work and expertise are important to me.

Last week, Nichole was involved in an incredible exchange, both publicly and privately, with a company called Solve360. They are owned by a company called Norada and produce a customer relationship management software which has the honor of having one of Nichole’s consulting clients as a customer. When Nichole reached out to them to try an answer some technical questions about how their service integrates with an email platform, she was disappointed in the routing and re-routing to the online help documentation (which wasn’t sufficient to answer her query) and posted these two tweets:

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50 comments

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