Tag: social networking

In a recent meeting with the CFO of one of my clients he stated, “I always thought marketing was just this thing that we did with all the best intentions in the world, but Eric you keep spouting off numbers to me about lead conversions, cost per lead, source statistics, and all sorts of useful information. Those are numbers I can relate too, thanks.” Well, you are welcome Mr. CFO, now can I get more money?

There are numerous, obvious reasons why Facebook and other social networking platforms are worthy of our attention. Social networks facilitate online connections by providing people with alternate ways to interact and share. These connections aren’t just for personal consumption; more and more businesses are building a Facebook presence to showcase their strengths and keep the social aspect of doing business alive and well. After all, isn’t it just as important for businesses to be sociable?

This post comes courtesy of Jackson Hole, Wyoming at the base of the Grand Teton’s National Park. Having lunch over the 4th of July weekend at Bubba’s BBQ (which I totally recommend if you ever visit this area) I overheard a conversation regarding a recent purchase and the desired upcoming purchase of a new horse. While I have no interest in owning a horse the conversation intrigued me as the three cowboys conversed on the pro’s and con’s of a fairly little known breeder in the area. How does this relate to social networking? This is the very root of social networking… just a difference of how it is administered.

Our series continues with the third part of our social marketing framework: How social media execution can help accelerate our message. Message distribution has always relied on sharing; in fact the entire concept of word of mouth marketing was based on peer-to-peer sharing. We also know that word of mouth is very powerful because it typically comes from a credible source. Credibility shrinks the sales cycle.

In the last post we talked about the first part of our social marketing framework. Now we are going to talk about part two – creating your own community.

The first thing I want to talk about is creation of a community; you can’t just create your own community. Communities take time to form and when we try to build a place on the web and then expect all our community members to…

R2i traveled to San Fran late in April to unveil the latest version of their social networking mash up technology, R2i Live, as the focal point of the Inbound Marketing Summit 2009 Conference. Assigned the aptly named moniker “Smash”, short for social mash up, R2i SMASH provides a robust and friendly environment which integrates the popular heavyweight social networking capabilities of Twitter, Flickr, text messaging, mobile video, Ustream, webcasting and multimedia messaging.

On Thursday, I took the train up from Baltimore to speak at the Philadelphia chapter of the CSO Breakfast Club. I was given the opportunity to get in front of 40 + chief security officers and guide them through my Social Networking vs. Social Media presentation I have been giving lately.

The reality of life is that we are living in a different world than our parents once lived. A digital world. Today we can barely get by without checking our phone, email, text messages, music files, etc. People are constantly on their Blackberries and iPhones, among other personal mobile devices. Social networks have virtually exploded, allowing us more opportunities to connect with technology and one another.

‘Build it and they will come’ no longer applies to houses, office buildings, electronic gadgets or web sites. 5 years ago whether you were the local landscaper, big corporation, a high tech startup or 20,000 membership non-profit if you created a decent looking web site, added keyword meta tags and submitted the site to a search engine people from all over the world would suddenly visit, even if just for a brief look. Now you are lucky if a visitor can find you much less remain interested in your site for more than 10 seconds. Why?

There are many aspects of social marketing, social media, social tools, social EVERYTHING that we have been working hard to, shall I say, crystallize. After much time and diligence, we finally have something that we are calling our social marketing framework (for lack of a more creative name at this time).
Our social marketing framework [...]