Boston Twestival is Coming Up!

I'm organizing the big Twestival party in Boston this year. And I'll let you in on a little secret... Our party is going to rock!

My dining room table is filling up with goodies to either raffle off or put in the silent auction. I've got four autographed CDs by an amazing musician @BT for our silent auction, Tea for Two from the Bristol Lounge, copies of Chris Brogan's "Social Media 101" courtesy of Wiley. I'm working out a few other great prizes - so stay tuned! All these great generous people are coming together to support a wonderful cause, Concern. So if you're in the Boston area please come join us for a celebration for a great cause! (And if you're not in Boston, search for a Twestival in a town near you - there are cities all over the world celebrating!)

So you're convinced this party is a worthy cause - you need the deets from me!

March 25, 2010

Start time: 6:00PM - 9:00PM (but we can stay as late as we want)

Red Sky Boston

16-18 North Street, Boston MA

Buy tickets here!

And please note PayPal and Amiando have teamed up to support Twestival and have waived all the fees - so 100% of our ticket sales go to Concern Worldwide!

If you would like to support Twestival in some way, please contact me!

It's Time for Social Media To Meet Direct Marketing

SoMe, this is Direct Marketing - DM, this is Social Media. It's time you start to work together.

I know people are going to get in an uproar, but let's give this a little more thought. How long ago were we thinking emails were not necessary for your Direct Mail campaign? Now it's one of the biggest, most cost-effective elements of a marketing campaign. I worked for a conference marketing company a few years ago and our highest ROI came from our email campaigns.

One of my favorite people to follow is John F Moore on Twitter. He is one of the biggest CHAMPIONS of Social CRM. Yes, Social Customer Relationship Management - as in using your database to create social marketing campaigns.

I know people are going to freak out because of the benefits of 'personal interaction' you find on twitter. Customer databases and CRMs are designed to keep track of client interaction - but what about when you put out an offer on Twitter? Yes, PUSH an offer out on twitter.

Here is a low hanging fruit example - consider a restaurant putting out an offer code for a free appetizer. To redeem this offer, your customers need to mention the code & twitter name when they order their appetizer. Not only have you captured a new vehicle of contact on your CRM (Twitter), but you have created a trackable campaign. Use your followers, mentions and RTs to create a reach profile and you can see the effectiveness of your campaign. People may argue that this is too much data to gather during the rush at a restaurant - but most restaurants are computerized so the servers can enter the data when they enter their orders. I know many restaurants have customer databases (Bugaboo Creek & TGIFriday to name a few). If their servers can enter a twitter handle on the fly, then slower paced businesses certainly can add the field to collect twitter names too.

Social Media is in its boom phase right now. People love the ability to reach out to a broad audience with thoughts and ideas about any topic on their mind. Some vehemently protect the ability to 'engage' on a one-to-one basis...but the same things can occur by phone or email. This is just a new medium of communication. When I can get special deals as a result of following a brand on twitter - I'm happy to put them into my feed. We've all developed filters to our emails, banner ads and junk mail. So this is another area where we can opt-in and filter out what doesn't apply to us. It's what we always do.

The Almost Job is Back.

I interviewed less than a week after the ice storm that crippled Central Massachusetts. I remember more weather hitting the day of my scheduled interview on that fateful day. I met with four people - one who ended up being a nice conversation, one scary conversation that I got great feedback on and two stellar knocked-it-out-of-the-park conversations....with the decision making folks. It was a great feeling to walk out of there and feel positive about my potential. Especially since it was still the beginning of the economic down turn and I had nailed it.

So that was 14 months ago - and just for curiosity, I went to the site of the would-be employer today. My job was posted - yikes!

I've tweeted about it a bit & commented on LinkedIn. I really need to reconnect with the hiring manager for this position. Here are the questions rattling in my head:

1. (Emotional dilema) Will they think I'm a total loser and not even give me a shot since I'm still looking 14 months later? (I've had a few consulting gigs, but nothing even close to covering a mortgage payment.)
2. (Ethical dilemma) I 'found' this company through a recruiter the first time - it appears they are not using this recruiter anymore the second time around. What are the rules of engagement?
3. (Education dilemma) I'm concerned about some of my most essential skills for this position need brushing up - but I don't have the access to the tools to refresh my skills anymore.
4. (Engagement dilemma) What's my best approach at contacting this person? Phone, email, handwritten letter?

For reference - they wanted to hire me, but needed to wait for their client to extend their contract. This client had a terrible time in the economy and it took several months but now this business seems to be much more stable - yet still has a long road to their own recovery. Due to the delay of this client, they were unable to officially extend me an offer. What should I do to make them extend it now?

Let's Banish the Marketing Guru

I hate the term Guru, Expert and the concept of self-proclamation of being "the best" at anything. Especially when you're referring to such a broad topic as Marketing or even Social Media. My issue is that there's no such thing as a Guru. You really need to be able to eat, sleep and breathe a topic. If you have time to do such a thing and truly be proficient, then you could easily claim Guru, but you need to narrow down the field.

Consider a Marketing Guru - that would mean a person is fully knowledgeable of all the subsets of marketing. They would have to know:
Search Engine Marketing/Optimization

Product Marketing

Promotional Marketing

Event/Tradeshow Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Direct Marketing

Digital Marketing

Advertising

Graphics

Website Development

Channel Marketing

New Product Development

R&D

Budget Management

ROI Management

etc

Basically the point I'm trying to get across is there are a lot of facets of marketing to consider - to be able to claim Guru of any of these single subgroups is very plausible. People build their careers on it and do quite well. I'd even say some people could be gurus on two or three of these topics.

What do people need to do to become a guru? Know the foundations of the subset, understand the industry trends and be able to implement the new developments from each area. It's a task of kaizen (Six Sigma's concept of continuous improvement) to be able to consider yourself a guru.

If you can claim full comprehension of all of the topics listed above, let me know. I'll give you a guru badge - but before you get it, I'm going to have the industry thought-leaders and gurus of each of the subsets test you and when each and everyone of the subset gurus agrees that you know their piece, then I'll give you the Marketing Guru Badge.

Blogkage

I haven't had any complete blog thoughts in a while. Nothing worth my standard 500 or so word posts. I am still actively looking for a full time job & I've got some consulting work keeping me occupied. I do have a few things kicking around in my head though:

1. Twitter users have rapid fire branding abilities. This is something that became obvious to me during the Super Bowl, New England Nor'easter that wasn't and Olympic Opening Ceremonies. We quickly flashed ideas to each other, often hashtagged in the instance that a little brand caught on and became an idea for the crowd.

2. I've been handling a small social media project for a client whose product is only available in another city. It opened my eyes to two things - one, my twitter feed is VERY locally minded and that this other city tweets differently than the Boston/New England area tweeters. These people are very similar in many ways and they are VERY different. I'm still learning about this city and find a piece of me really falling in love with the citizen Tweeps.

3. I'm Ghost Tweeting! Yikes - but I'm doing it as the voice of my client's product. I'm not "Bob Soandso" of XYZ company. It's giving me a lot of insight. Sadly I'll never be able to reveal my identity as the ghost tweeter, but I do have to confess to having a ton of fun. I'm also being VERY cautious to NOT cross contaminate my twitter feeds so that I'm not found out. That in and of itself is exhausting. I'm not a fan of continually logging in and out of my accounts!

That's all that's kicking in my head at the moment. Hopefully one of these will become a full-fledged post. I suspect my learnings with my client will be quite valuable, but the terms of my contract may keep further posts unpublished.

Ugly Politics!

Direct marketers know the risk of list fatigue. It HURTS business to overwhelm the contacts in your database. Pushy marketing is bad for business. Badgering past and potential clients to death is going to get them to pull their interest and investments out of your business and give it to your competitor. As a resident of Massachusetts, I have been bombarded by political calls. Since Saturday morning (January 16 - yes 2 days ago) I have received 10 calls to my house from the camp over at team Scott Brown. (Oddly enough Martha Coakley had not called my house once....and I'm thrilled that my call volume is half of what other households have received.) It doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, this incessant calling is BEYOND irritating.

If I thought it would actually happen, I would refuse to vote (in protest of this phone harassment) so that the seat up for grabs remains open. But this is Massachusetts - we have a better chance of getting an 80 degree day on January 19th than for our people to not vote. The robocalling and phone assaults by campaign associates is annoying (if not voter harassment). The National Do Not Call list doesn't apply to these calls - so as voters, we get to deal with a barrage of annoying messages non-stop. I'm vehemently attached to my right to vote - so I will vote, but with a bitter taste in my mouth. I am at my boiling point with the calls as are many other voters. Here's just a few comments I saw in my twitter feed in the past few days:

It's annoying to be a voter and have your phone ringing off the hook. I know who I'm voting for already. I know the impact my vote will have - one person will win the seat and I will have either voted for them or against them.

My thoughts on this matter are this:

Both Martha Coakley and Scott Brown are driving their voters to distraction with the non-stop calls. How are they BOTH so out of touch with modern social norms that they feel this is an appropriate way to win votes? As a voter, I can see one call per week as acceptable. And maybe one per day the week leading up to the election - but excess of five calls per household? That is just wrong. Are they going to be this persistent in Washington - will they call Obama this often to get their policies passed? Will they take my seven calls per day when I need something?

Oh yeah, I need a job - so Mr. Brown, Mrs. Coakley - can I call you non-stop until I get one?

Pre-Branding and the Twitter Lists

I chose the name Little Miss Social Media when I had a particularly inspiring conversation with my husband. Since I locked myself into this brand, I have struggled with it. People can misinterpret my choice of handle as someone who promotes myself as a "Social Media Expert/Guru/Sherpa". However, that is NOT it at all - I chose the handle when my husband commented to me that my enthusiasm for social media made him call me "Little Miss Social Media" in conversation. I loved the ring to it, the memorability of it and the throw back to the "Little Miss" books I read growing up. I had a temporary thought-loss of the problems I could bring on myself with a brand so deeply steeped in a Social Media-oriented name. (Hello, analysts predict 250,000 social media sites will be live by the end of 2010 - this is the stuff that prohibits anyone from appropriately claiming "Social Media Guru" status.)

With all the potential for misconception known (and occasionally thrown in my face by someone who had a little too much snark juice for supper), I am sticking with my brand. I'm never going to get the handle "Jayna" since that was picked up in 2007 and she's still using it. People in Boston know Little Miss and the folks that really matter know I'm not trying to write the next post claiming I'm the Boston Big-Dog.

However, I'm finding myself on lists in good company thanks to my name. It leaves no question when someone sees my handle...I'm a big fan of the Social Media. And that has me on lists as a "thought leader" and in the company with amazing people who I look at as inspiration. I kind of dig it. I'm still not convinced lists are too much more than vanity. I find my lists include a lot of overlap, the 'foodie' doesn't constantly discuss food (well some of them do). I am also "all you need to know about Boston" on someone's list....since I'm the only one on it.

Lists are fun, and thanks to my twitter handle, I get to share space on lists with the real thought leaders like Chris Brogan (Hi Chris! He's 'listens' for his name a lot...I learned that trick from him), C.C. Chapman (we share a few lists such as the Bentley Alumni list, and that list with Brogan and me), the inimitable GaryVee and a number of other awesome people who are local, smart and fun to know. Now that we're on these lists, I wonder just what the creators and followers are doing with them.

Anyone care to sound off?