Social Media Management

Should We Be Un-Integrating Our Marketing?

by Eric Brown · June 14, 2011

Ever notice that there are always two camps: One that wants to split things down the center and be all things to all people, and the other that is radically on one side or the other sucking down the Kool-Aid with a giant straw?

As of late I have found myself trying to be closer to the center, saying such things as you need an integrated marketing approach. I think that is a mistake. I should be asking, “What marketing venue or platform are you going to stop doing, before you start doing social media marketing?: The best way is NOT an integrated marketing approach. Businesses simply cannot add more things. More marketing equates to spending more money. A more appropriate question would be, “What are we going to stop doing in order to allow room for worn out ways to pass and new ways to emerge?”

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Franchise Social Media Tools: The Customer’s Perspective

by Jason Falls · December 28, 2010

Elizabeth McGee had a problem. In late 2009 McGee, the chief financial officer at Apple Gold Group, a 70+ franchisee of Applebee’s Restaurants in Raleigh, N.C., was browsing through the organically grown Facebook pages of her company’s network of stores. While she was excited that the managers had taken the initiative to build connecting points with their customers on the growing social network, she was also concerned at the lack of brand continuity in messaging, logos and the like.

“It was a hodgepodge,” she told me. “In the beginning our biggest concern was around oversight and governance.”

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Is it Time to Move Social Media off the Corner of Your Desk?

by Mark Smiciklas · October 28, 2010

One of the biggest challenges organizations face when it comes to social media is “social capacity” – the degree to which they can effectively engage in social media discovery, strategy, implementation and management.

In order to build out programs in a financially efficient manner, some businesses adopt an “off the corner of the desk” approach – where existing employees take on social media responsibilities in addition to their regular job tasks. As social media takes root, some level of success is attained and value becomes established, another challenge begins to presents itself – deciding whether it’s time to assign a dedicated social media leader to guide strategy. When does the opportunity cost of a “desk corner” mind set begin to outweigh the cost of restructuring your social program?

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Five Tools To Manage Social Media For The Franchise

by Jason Falls · August 2, 2010

Managing social media content and conversations can be difficult and time consuming. You’ve got a company blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube and Picasa accounts for multimedia, perhaps do some participating on industry message boards … even for a small business, the time and effort can be overwhelming. Now imaging you have five locations, each with its own distinct need for outposts and content. Or that you’re a national brand that needs to be consistent and efficient with social media content, but you have franchisees who want their own Facebook pages.

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Three Tips For Social Media Management

by Jason Falls · November 6, 2009

I sat across the lunch table talking to Craig Bruenderman and Sam Gracie of ResonantVibes.com yesterday, talking about their community of electronic mix music producers and fans, smiling at what I heard. These are young, tech-oriented entrepreneurs, immersed in all the code and programming most of us fear. They use social tools to build their business around. They’re digital natives. What did they say that made me smile?

“How do you choose which social networks and channels to focus on?”