Social Media Marketing

Salvaging Your Sanity as a Community Manager

by Kat French · May 23, 2013

I was once fortunate enough to sit in a training session with Jake McKee, “The Community Guy.” We were talking about building brand communities, and he said something that stuck with me. I believe he was quoting Guy Kawasaki.

“If you last three years as a community manager, you’re good. If you last four years, you’re really good. And if you last five years, you’re crazy.”

I must be crazy, because I counted it up. I’ve been doing community or social media management of some sort, (albeit for a lot of different companies) for over five years.

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Do You Understand The Mathematics Of Social Marketing

by Jason Falls · May 22, 2013

One of the advantages of having exposure to a large e-commerce company and the incredible talent within its walls is that you learn from some of the top minds in the industry. It was just a few months into my tenure at CafePress that I started to dive deep into learning from the team that runs one of the largest Internet retail operations in the world. And boy, have I learned.

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Will Thinking Beyond Social, Ruin Social

by Jason Falls · May 13, 2013

The thematic meme running through the social marketing world of late is that we’re about to move beyond social media marketing as a primary practice to thinking more broadly about our marketing and our business. Social is part of a greater whole and social-only thinking won’t get you very far for much longer.

Part of this is driven by the social consultants threatened by those of lesser breadth of experience. Part of it is the reality that the industry is maturing. Social is now part of marketing. Marketing is almost impossible today without social.

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Lean In: Women are their own Worst Enemy in Business

by Nichole Kelly · May 7, 2013

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is starting an important movement with her book Lean In and online community LeanIn.org The premise is that there is a vast inequality of women in senior positions in the workforce and she is committed to opening the conversation about why. In her Ted talk, Sandberg argues that “women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world.” In corporate, she mentions C-level jobs held by women are 15-16% and have remained flat since 2002.

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Blog Monetization Without Advertising

by Jason Falls · April 29, 2013

Is it possible to monetize your blog, website or digital presence without advertising? Certainly it is, but only in certain contexts. Consultants or businesses can focus their energies on providing thought leadership and educational posts with the thought that interested parties will reach out to them to hire if and when they need the help. The organic content leads to search engine results which leads to traffic which leads to leads, and so on.

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Disclosures for Bloggers and Brands

by Stephanie Schwab · April 24, 2013

Recently, the FTC released updated guidelines for disclosure in advertising. This 2013 update, titled “.com Disclosures,” supplements their 2009 Testimonials & Endorsement Report, which was one of the first explanations of the requirements for disclosure of endorsements, sponsorships and other payments from online endorsers, including bloggers.

The primary reason for the disclosure requirement is to assist readers and viewers in determining whether a blogger or endorser has a material connection to the brand about which they’ve produced content. It seems pretty obvious (to me, at least) why this is important to know.

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