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Ilana Rabinowitz

Leadership As A Social Media Strategy

by Ilana Rabinowitz · September 20, 2012

“The idea in Seth Godin’s book, Tribes, is that each one of us can be a very special leader, giving something unique to the world.”

This was a tweet I stumbled on last week. I was taken by it because it was a great summary of Godin’s book in 140 characters.  It also struck me that providing leadership content is a highly effective social media strategy.

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Where To Draw The Line With A Social Media Agency

by Ilana Rabinowitz · August 30, 2012

An agent is an entity that acts on your behalf.  When you are hiring a social media agency, you are hiring someone to provide any of a range of services for you that you either don’t have the time or the ability to handle.  In other business matters, you may hire a lawyer or an accountant to handle matters you are not capable of dealing with.  No one can be an expert in everything.

But in our interpersonal relationships we rarely hire agents.  You can’t very well hire someone to discipline your child or date for you or grow your social circle.  Well, in some cases you can, I suppose, but long-term your not being in the relationship becomes an issue.

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Life Is Messy. Work Is Messy. Share It All.

by Ilana Rabinowitz · August 8, 2012

Last week, our company, Lion Brand Yarn Company, hosted a number of craft bloggers who were in town to attend the BlogHer conference. It was quite an impressive group of women. Juggling family and entrepreneurial ventures while staying fit and doing charitable work — I get tired just thinking about their lives!

But great accomplishment comes by a path that is has rough patches and is at times chaotic and unpredictable.

Courtesy Carrie Lundell. This Mama Makes Stuff.

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How To Turn Facebook Into Your Single-Most Effective Marketing Tool

by Ilana Rabinowitz · July 18, 2012

The most common marketing mistake is focusing on the product and not the customer. Messages about the product and its benefits without reference to the person who will use it constitute announcements, not marketing.

In order to speak to customers so that you will be heard, you need to make sure that they feel that they are being heard.  And the only way to make the kind of impression on a customer that makes her choose your product over the myriad of options is to speak to her emotions.  This requires having a deep understanding of your customers.

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How To Avoid The Illusion of Social Media Engagement

by Ilana Rabinowitz · June 27, 2012

I recently attended a conference, where Claire Diaz Ortiz, who heads social innovation at Twitter, spoke about influence.  She said something surprising.  She said that two of the most engaged “brands” on Twitter had far fewer followers than the celebrities or giant brands with many millions of followers.  Those brands were both Christian Ministries:  Joel Osteen and Rick Warren.  Today, with about 725,000 followers, a Joel Osteen tweet gets far more retweets than one from Lady Gaga, who has 26 million followers.  The reason, Ortiz said, is shared values.

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The Future Of Retail In 5 Words

by Ilana Rabinowitz · June 6, 2012

Imagine that you are playing a movie of the history shopping in reverse. The film would start with someone checking out at Amazon. We would see people shopping at mass market retailers, then back to a time when malls were the rage, to the era when department stores ruled, to small town America’s general store, and eventually rewinding all the way back to the open air markets of ancient civilization.

The way people shop has changed over the years, but today’s changes are a threat to the very existence of bricks and mortar.  Online shopping gives consumers the opportunity to purchase anything they can think of through their phone or computer. Mobile scanning has turned stores into showrooms.

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The Business Survival Reading List

by Ilana Rabinowitz · May 18, 2012

Disruption. If one word exemplifies what’s happening to the world of business today, that’s it. The high-speed pace of technological change, with its ability to disrupt business models and pricing has made disruption an everyday reality.  This point came home to me when I heard Ray Kurzweil speak at a Shop.org conference on how the rate of change is doubling every year and what that means for the future.  When you see the trajectory of change, and what it means to the not-too-distant future, you can’t help but feel a powerful sense of urgency about keeping pace. The only way to avoid being eliminated from the game in this environment is to disrupt yourself.

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Don’t Let ROI Get In Your Way

by Ilana Rabinowitz · April 24, 2012

Here’s the question you don’t want to hear while you’re building an audience: “When will we see a dollar from this?”

There is a Zen aspect to audience building goes like this:

  • If you want to be able to sell people something, don’t focus on selling.
  • If you want people to listen to you, don’t talk about yourself.
  • If you want to get something back from your audience, be generous.

So, how can you see a dollar from this?  Wrong question.

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Social Media Lessons From Mad Men

by Ilana Rabinowitz · April 3, 2012

In the sixties, when Mad Men ruled, creative content took a long time to produce.  Agencies concepted, polished and pitched. Clients reviewed.  Agencies filmed, edited and delivered.  It took months for print and television ads to see the light of day.

In the age of real time marketing, whether you engage an agency or not, day-to-day you are the agency.  The people you talk to online are the clients.

Every post is a pitch. Every post is a chance to win the hearts of your clients.

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About Ilana Rabinowitz

Ilana Rabinowitz

Ilana Rabinowitz is the vice-president for marketing for Lion Brand Yarn and blogs about social media at Marketing Without A Net. Rabinowitz approaches marketing with an uncompromising focus on the customer and a grounding in psychology and neuroscience to understand what motivates people to make buying decisions.  She believes that businesses need to develop their own media as a means of creating a branded experience for customers.  She has spoken at digital marketing conferences including Web 2.0, Blogher Business and Internet Retailer. She is the author of a book about psychology, a book about mindfulness and co-author of a book about the culture of knitting. Follow her on Twitter at @ilana221.

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