A Brilliant Social Media Presentation

I stumbled across this presentation from Seth Goldstein on Slideshare while doing some research. This is something that is extremely well designed, informative, and fun.

Is Your Goal Growth? Empower your Employees with Social Media.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have been reading Seth Godin‘s book Free Prize Inside for a… I think… fourth time.  In the beginning of the book is a quote that I have underlined another four times: 

“If your goal is growth, marketing is all that matters–and everything you do is now part of marketing… Every product and every service can be made remarkable. And anyone in your organization can make it happen!” (pg.

This excerpt from the book hit me pretty hard when it comes to online marketing and using social media. The concept of EVERYTHING you possibly do in your company (both large and small) being connected to marketing is still an idea that is buried. I still have conversations with corporate employees or owners who are mistified that the PR side of a company doesn’t discuss anything with the marketing side or vice versa. Every service you create. Every phone call you take. Every PR release and marketing campaign you run. It is all connected to growing a brand… to growing your company.  If you want your employees to talk about it. If you want every piece of your business to be a marketing vehicle… doesn’t social media make sense as a communication platform? Zappos has perfected the use of Twitter as an employee communication model.. Why can’t you? It is time to stop being afraid of the massive force of online communication. It is time to stop putting firewalls up because your afraid your employees are not being productive. They are not being productive for a reason… and it’s not Facebook. If they love what they do… maybe it is time to allow them to communicate that fact.. and if they don’t.. You probably have more problems than communication. 

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If You Want the Party Favors, You’ve Got to Go to the Party

Paula Werne is old enough to remember going to a friend’s house to see one of those new fangled color TV sets. She has been Twittering since before it was cool. As Director of Public Relations at Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana, since 1991, she started the first park-hosted blog and microblog.

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A few months ago I took part in a social media panel speaking to members of the hospitality industry. A few minutes into my portion, a hand in the audience shot up. Its owner demanded to know, “What’s the ROI in all of this?!”

Good question, but…how the heck should I know?!

No, I didn’t really say that. (Heckling your audience is rarely a good idea.) It was a good question though, and said a lot about the person asking the question. A few follow-up nudges from me, and it became apparent this person wanted nothing to do with social media and was attending the session under protest. It just seemed like “more work” with no proof of bumping the bottom line.

As I attempted to get back on track, another hand waved frantically. This questioner wanted to know what new demographic segment was coming to Holiday World Theme Park as a result of our four years of blogging.

Again the urge to heckle. Who sent you guys, Six Flags?

It became clear that some of the audience member came to our session expecting promises of immediate cha-ching if they agreed to force themselves to post a little something now and then.

Sigh.

Social Media, I told them, is a party. It’s a social event, and everyone is invited. You don’t have to go, but you’re welcome. As you enter the party, be guided by the same rules you would follow at a reception or mixer. Be clever and witty. Teach without being preachy. Whisper a behind-the-scenes nugget or two. But also: listen. Have a conversation and invite others to join in. It’s just that easy and just that overwhelming. Rest assured, though, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Funner, too.

So where’s the ROI? How about increased website visitation? As long as you’re selling something (such as theme park tickets), you can watch your traffic build and discover what sort of blog post boosts interest in making a purchase. The more you engage your readers, the more they’ll want to visit and tell others.

As a seasonal attraction, we face the challenge of engaging our audience during the long, cold, boring winter. There are lots of other parks and other vacation venues outspending us with year-round advertising. So how do we stay top-of-mind?

We invite the readers to be part of our park family. They get to know us individually and share in our day-to-day off-season activities. Heck, I even tweet from our bimonthly Directors meetings. (Our followers were delighted to discover our president, Will Koch, started one meeting with his iPhone gavel app.)

And speaking of Twitter, we’ve been at it for a year and coincidentally will hold our first Twitter Event on the one-year anniversary (twanniversary?). Quite simply, on Thursday we’re previewing our new ride,Pilgrims Plunge (which just happens to be the World’s Tallest Water Ride) to the news media. Part of planning a media preview is finding riders. Actually, finding riders isn’t the problem, it’s figuring out a way to invite a finite number of folks without making the non-invitees feel snubbed.

Enter Twitter. By inviting riders via Twitter and creating a Twitter Event, we hope to create secondary news stories about riders using this media darling to talk about Pilgrims Plunge. (By the way, the news release a year ago announcing our microblogging venture got exactly zero mainstream media attention. Crickets. But now it’s cool, so we’ll give it another shot.)

If you’d like to watch our little experiment, please follow us @HolidayWorld (we’re also @SplashinSafari and @SantaClausLand) on Thursday. By encouraging our Twitter Riders to use the #HW hashtag leading up to and during the event, we’re hoping to create a fun stream of reaction at http://tinyurl.com/holitag.

At the same time, we’ll post videos on our YouTube Channel and photos on our Flickr and Facebook fan pages.

The party is hoppin’ and all the cool kids are here. Some of us non-cool kids sneaked in the back way, and we’re catching on just fine.

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Time Magazine Gets Owned by Social Media

And I thought I had seen it all… well… enough for my 24 years on this earth… apparently not.

I was reading an article at Mashable about the founder of a “legendary memebreeding forum” called 4Chan topping the Time’s 100 Most Influtential People Poll. I had to read the article twice. The person called “moot” is the founder of a website? A founder of a website beat out the likes of Rick Warren and Anwar Ibrahim? Say it ain’t so. 

What is hilarious is that the list was apparantly hacked by 4chan users in an attempt (successful attempt) to completely deface the Time 100 Poll. The surprising thing is not only did Moot win the poll but his followers also hacked away at the entire list. According to Mashable: 

“The vote is obviously hacked. Time’s attempts to fix the damage came too late, and the 4chan folks managed to put the encrypted message back into order (if you read the first letters of the first 21 names on the list, the message reads “Marblecake also the game”).”

The world is becoming smaller. One the most influential magazines in the world was infected by an anime/meme forum. Despite the fact that Time magazine built up defenses and put a captcha in place… it was too late to quell the amost 17 million votes for the 4chan founder. 

To be honest with you… the important lesson to be learned from all of this…

You can’t afford to ignore the Internet. It is NOW a part of life… our daily routine… for people, cultures, and clients. 

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Social Media Lab Developed to Help Interns and Biz

Thanks to my partner in crime at Brandswag, Brandon Coon, for sending me this article on a Social Media Lab in Oklahoma.

There is a company in Tulsa, OK that is taking the concept of marketing and education in social media and magnifying it by 1000%. Cubic , a creative marketing and advertising company, has developed a Social Media Lab that is dedicated to teaching young professionals and business owners the front and back of technology and social media.

Check out the article and read the background behind the idea from Cubic.

I like the idea of the Social Media Lab because we need (as a culture) to start helping the masses understand the concepts of social media technology and the Internet. It is important for the learning curve to start collapsing from all sides. I am glad that tech and new media companies are taking this upon their shoulders.

From SMASH to the Social Media Lab, education is going to be the leading focus of many social media and new media marketing firms in the near future.

What do you think about the Social Media Lab? Do you think it will work?

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Being Productive in Social Media Presentation

I have been meaning to get this up on my blog since Friday so here it is. This is the slidedeck from my presentation at the Fundraising 2.0 conference. By the way, I am still trying to figure out the quirks of Slideshare and synching with Powerpoint. I apologize in advance for anything that look a little off.

Social Media Can Help Your Business Be Remarkable

There is a constant theme in social media that defines the use of the tool in terms of marketing and communication… being remarkable. This concept was first started when Seth Godin wrote about it in his book Free Prize Inside and Purple Cow.  The whole concept of being remarkable is focusing on the customer who is “willing to make a remark about” your product or service. I wanted to take a look at the word remark because there is a lesson buried within this word-of-mouth marketing concept. 

re⋅mark (from dictionary.com) 
   /rɪˈmɑrk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ri-mahrk]
–verb (used with object)
1. to say casually, as in making a comment: Someone remarked that tomorrow would be a warm day.
2. to note; perceive; observe: I remarked a slight accent in her speech.
3. Obsolete. to mark distinctively.

Do you know what hit me? The third definition in the group above: to mark distinctively. Many people view the concept of a remark as a casual comment in passing. Unfortunately or fortunately… depending on your situation… it is important to remember that a remark is no longer casual. In a world where communication is doubling ever second (or so it seems) a casual remark can spread like wildfire. If you can build products and services that are remarkable…

… that people are talking about…

… that people love …

You can create a word-of-mouth campaign that will grow your business by leaps and bounds. The truth of the matter is this: if you are not being talked about in a positive light…You are doing something wrong. Seth has the tendency to ask, “Are you invisible? Or are you remarkable.” I am going to encourage all the business owners and marketing professionals of the world to do 5 things:

1. Love the product and service you sell and believe it can be Remarkable. 

2. Talk about what you do with excitement (drink caffeine if you have to).

3. Send surveys to make sure your product or service is staying remarkable.

4. Utilize a blog or forum to allow your customers to share the story (to remark on your story).

5. Believe in the concept of using social media as a HUGE communication tool. It is here to stay. 

Are you invisible or remarkable?

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