Cafe Blog Reviews

I decided to move the conversation happening over on Facebook (surrounding personal branding) regarding my post on Dan Schwabel’s Personal Branding blog: From Identity to Personality. Be Remembered. ———————————————— Dave Bennett: Dear Social Media Expert, twitterific and facebookish Kyle Lacey, First off let me say that I respect what you’re doing in marketing, you’re pushing the edges of the field, you’re making people money, and you’re (hopefully) doing something that you love. All things I respect and root for in this world. I have some issues, a few philosophical peccadilloes that I need to pick with you and the industry you participate in. So from one double major in philosophy to another (I think I remember you being involved in AU’s philosophy program) let me start my being acerbic and dispensing with pretense. What you call identity and personality seem to really be pretentious self-projections. Don’t get me wrong, they might be really successful self-projections that gain favor, popularity, and a following but they are far from human dignity. What you see as the point of self expression is external recognition. But the self is something internal and independent from what others think of you, if you are basing who you are on how to attract others, then you really are nothing at all. You’re a pretentious clone of perceived likes and dislikes, a customer service invertebrate bending to the latest marketing trends. My issue isn’t really with customer service or with marketing, its with the collusion of these two and personal identity. When in reality your virtual representation is really the most controlled and least personal representation you can come up with. That is something I am ok with, but call it what it is: namely an advertisement, don’t continue to add to the massive amount of illiteracy out there. What I mean is that there are many people who can read, but few who are literate, few who mean what they say and understand what is meant when they read. Don’t add to the misuse of language and self-understanding in your furthering of marketing, viral marketing, etc. Branding myself is the biggest pretense yet, and while successful, crosses into the unethical when it associates the person solely with the symbol. As if a symbol could ever really encompass a person, especially when personal branding doesn’t really represent the person at all but the concoction of personal investment in an idea or product. I guess what I really want to know is: when you leave an emotional response on twitter or facebook, create a following, if your emotional response is raw. If it is independent of your desire for a following. And if it isn’t then is it you or a self-projection of you? A dumbassed question really, but it begs the ethics of human dignity. Where is human dignity in self-branding when self-branding doesn’t allow for unpopular responses? I hate the idea of selling your “self”, because what is sold isn’t “self” but what the customer wants. Call it what it is. Basically, I’m wondering, where do these things fall into twitter and facebook marketing? How does self-branding differ from self-projection? Me/Kyle: Let me first state that the idea “from identity to personality” is loosely based off of a excerpt from Emotional Branding by Marc Gobe. “Identity is descriptive. It is recognition. Personality is about character and charisma. Brand identities are unique and express a point of difference. But this is only the first step. Brand personalities, on the other hand, are special. They have a charismatic character that provokes an emotional response. American airlines has a strong identity, but Virgin airlines as personality.” One other thing to think about in terms of my post: The things I write about are not suppose to based in any type of philosophical nature… it would be like scientist arguing my logic using scientific reasoning. I write and discuss concepts in business communication, period. The post you read and responded to… was merely an idea behind personal branding. I am not arguing the point of self discovery and emotional response in terms of inner angst (or beauty). I am plainly talking about the concepts of a story… the emotional stimulation a customer or client will receive when they connect with something you write or say.. I write what I think because it is reality.. it isn’t steeped in some inner personal conflict or unrealistic interpretation of identity vs personality. It is business plain and simple… I will give more soon. Thank you for your thoughts. I love debating and trying to solve issues in communication! ———————————- What do you think? Is it worth furthering the conversation on this blog?

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A Philosophical Debate Over Personal Branding

We have been waiting… and by we I mean every social media consultant on the face of the planet… for Twitter to announce business friendly applications and developments . It finally came on Monday with the announcement of the development of what is called Contributors (and other applications). From the Twitter Blog : “The feature we are beta testing is called ‘Contributors’ – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor’s username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations.” I like the concept but it still is not as revolutionary as it should be (in my humble opinion). I trust that Twitter has some other ideas up their sleeves in regards to businesses truly maximizing the tool. Until then we will stumble… make mistakes… add to many followers… send out the wrong message and get spammed to death by MLM’s and idiots. Until the beta is released to bigger subset of users the opinions… will be varied. Want more information about the Twitter beta? Twitter signals commercial accounts (robbiz1978.blogspot.com) Twitter Runs “Feature Test” For Businesses (centernetworks.com) Twitter Highlights Coming Contributer API (thenextweb.com) BREAKING: Twitter Starts Testing Features for Businesses (mashable.com)

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Twitter Announces Enhanced Business Applications

Matt Rhodes over at Freshnetworks sparked my post today with a quote from the article: Love Your Customers. Use Social Media. “A brand should be thinking of themselves as part of a consumer’s personal brand rather than the other way around…” So many times we find ourselves spending money on external marketing, advertising, and branding. How do we get noticed? How do we get the average consumer to remember our brand name? It is all about ME. ME. ME. How do we get them to spend money? Acquisition. Acquisition. While I think internal branding and design is important to success… social media has created a space where you can become part of the LIFE of a consumer. Talk about a good way to spark viral marketing! If you are molded into a client or consumers life… the potential of being spread to friends, family, and co-workers is exponential! We can talk about internal marketing, external promotion, advertising, marketing, branding, and design… but if you want true results… Use the tools in front of you to create relationships… to start conversations… to monitor your brand. It is going back to your brand being lovable and NOT a dirty flirt. Don’t sleep around and screw up your relationships. Related articles by Zemanta What Can Search Engine Marketing Toronto Do For You? (ronmedlin.com) Wine Kitz Squeezes More Out of Their Marketing Dollars with Marketing Engine from Globally Boundless (prweb.com) Flash! It’s Not About Engagement (socialwebschool.com) Radio And The Internet [Read Only] [Compatibility Mode] (slideshare.net)

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Don’t Sleep Around on Me. I Want a Relationship

We spend oodles of  time talking about increased exposure for your company or personal brand while using social media. We spend countless hours reading about tips to gain attention and pull users into our content. Personally. I spend quite a bit on  Google Reader trying to stay ahead of the curve and consume the next big idea. Many small business owners concentrate on one aspect of social media: the  attention of the users. It is mainly the increased exposure to potential clients that starts the interest wheel turning. This is the old marketing strategy of… the more content you share the more eyes you will hit. We need to take it a bit further than just building brand recognition. It is hard to measure brand recognition in terms of return on investment. Initially when entering into a social media marketing strategy companies need to think about the attention gaining concepts for the plan. Whether you are doing a contest, being productive on social networks , or launching a new blog it is important to initially focus on the attention aspect of social media. What is truly important (in a business sense) is the action the user takes to buy and/or become interested in your product. You have all the attention you can muster! How do you turn the user’s attention into action. 4 Ways to Change Attention to Action 1. Free eBook: Write a short book about your expertise. Are you an accountant? A business coach? Maybe you are a plumber who is just getting involved online? Write a quick page turner on some topics that will be beneficial to your readers. Offer it for a free download and capture their email address. This will allow you to build your database while already zeroing in on interested prospects.  Chris Brogan has done an excellent job at this. 2. Blog or Email Subscription In everything you do in social media it is extremely important to always have a  subscription box for users to subscribe to your thoughts and offerings. A great email tool for wordpress is  FeedBurner Email Subscription . 3. Promotional Banners or Links to your Profile Always have a link present (image or text) that offers a discount on your services. You can also have a link directed to your company website that allows users to invest more time in learning about your services. This is a huge example of way to drive your attention users to your website and sell them on your services. 4. Gain Their Trust You need to become involved in the communities that potentially may be a revenue source for your company. Take the time to respond to questions, ask questions, invest in writing great content, and helping people out. This is a huge aspect of changeing attention to action. The steps towards the buying pattern of a user has a lot to do with trust in the social media environment. Gain their trust and offer them something to hard to put down. Gaining the trust of a user is the more important of the four steps listed above. User’s attention is not a bad thing but in order to measure your  ROI  you must take some of them to the action steps. 5. Use Intense Debate to Encourage Further Conversation. Intense Debate is an AWESOME comment plugin that allows for intense comment functionality for your blog. The features include: comment threading, reply-by-email, email notifications, commenter profiles, moderation/blacklisting, reputation points, widgets, and Twitter integration (to new a few). Related articles by Zemanta Social search and Sidewiki – not game changing, but the game is changing (blogstorm.co.uk) Social Media Marketing for Event Planners – Part 2: RSS Feeds & More About Blogs (eventcoup.com) Technology and the Real-Time Web: Blog World Expo 2009 (slideshare.net) You Know You’re A Cool Geek When…. (thenextweb.com)

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5 Ways to Change Attention to Action in Social Media

In the world of small business owners… we would all love to be influencers. We would love to be perceived as the expert in the matter of which we are selling and we should be. A question that keeps surfacing among the “small biz chatter” is directed toward the subject of influence. Well… I think we are here to finally answer that. Thanks to Lisa Hoffmann and  Mashable . Lisa was reading a post from Micah Baldwin  (Lijit Networks ) called  HOW TO: Measure Online Influence and I decided to check it out and read it for myself. I wanted to sum up some points Micah made and push them towards the small business owner. Social media marketing is very much a brand development tool for the small business owner. The majority of the time it is used for lead generation or visibility in a specific industry or region. Now, in order to realize the potential of social media and get excited..  instead of smoke and mirrors boredom … let’s look at Micah’s definition of Influence: Influence = (Personal Brand * Knowledge * Trust) So.. in order to maximize your reach online.. you need to be able to focus on the three top tiers of influence listed above. I am going to add another into the mix in order to speak to the small business owners in the group: Influence = (Personal Brand * Offline Interaction * Knowledge * Trust) The main purpose of talking about influence and personal brand recognition is to add the concept of offline social networking (something a small business owner lives day to day). In order to maximize your influence online you need to be be able to take it offline and create a 2-Touch-Point model of influence. You should read Micah’s post about the concepts of influence, personal brand, knowledge, and trust because it is great! We need to remember that the Personal Brand building of a small business owner has to include the offline and online networking in order to be strong. Related articles by Zemanta Making Social Media a Tool, Not a Distraction (mashable.com) Social Media, Blogs and Relationship Marketing (opencircle.co.za) Small Business Who Gets Domain Name Brand Protection And Call To Action (brucemarler.com)

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The Definition of Influence in Marketing and Social Media

This graphic hit me hard. A simple design and yet such a profound message. Why don’t marketers know how to speak human? Also… a simple questions. Why is it so hard? As marketers… shouldn’t we strive for perfecting communication on a daily basis? How do we create a message that will resonate with our customers… our company? How do we take an idea and transform it into a living… breathing… story? How do we take a product/service/offering and make it speak Human? Why is it so hard? In my opinion… the root of the problem is our inability to separate the bottom-line, our text book learning curve, and our customer voice. It is hard to get to the point where we are being more genuine… than business driven. Could the answer be the Internet? We are only beginning to understand the power of the Internet and the tools inside of this vast network of people. We are no longer products and services but people . Customers are people first… and buyers second. Why don’t businesses know how to speak human? They should. We should. You should. There is no better place than here. There is no better time than now. Related articles by Zemanta 7 tips for putting the public back in public relations (kevin.lexblog.com) Breakthrough for mobile video calls? (threeminds.organic.com) Social Media Marketing Triads – version 1.1 (slideshare.net) Why Are We Failing To Help Small Business Understand Social Media? (thecustomercollective.com)

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Marketers Can’t Speak Human

We had an excellent seminar this morning at Brandswag . The seminar was over the concepts of integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy. It is extremely important that every business drive social media through traditional marketing practices…. and vice-versa. Below you will find my Powerpoint presentation from the seminar. Integrating Social Media View more presentations from Kyle Lacy I wanted to break down 10 ways to integrate social media into your traditional marketing practices. The following tips are simple reminders that the world is changing and it is extremely important to shift with the edge. 1. Remember that customers are people first and buyers second It is important to keep in mind that your customers are not only a demographic and a wallet… but an individual. If you start to incorporate the thinking of “individualistic marketing” your focus will be extremely… targeted. 2. People thrive on conversation and deals A study recently released by Razorfis h  states that of “ those that follow a brand on Twitter , 44% say that access to deals is the main reason. The same holds true for those that added a brand on Facebook or Myspace , where 37% cite access to exclusive deals or offers as their main reason.” (pg 9) There will always be a place for conversation and deals. Integrate your direct mail and coupon deals into your social media marketing. 3. Integration is extremely important because of speed and portability Mobile technology is revolutionizing the way the world communicates. Social media will hit mass appeal because of the mobile phone and the pda. Thousands of text messages are sent on a daily basis… even an hourly basis… It is rumored that 4.5 billion cell phones will be on the market by the end of 2010. China has a mobile provider with 500 million cell phone users. We are going to be mobile… portable.. and fast. 4. We are shifting from uni-directional and bi-directional communication to multi-directional. (slide 16) 5.  Listening and monitoring your brand online This is one of the more important things you can do before integrating social media into your marketing strategy. Use Google Alerts or Radian 6 to monitor your brand and understand the positive and negative influence the Internet is having on your company and clients. 6. Objective and Strategy need to be developed before using social media Would you do anything in your business before planning out the ramifications of your actions? The same applies to social media. Now… if you would rather just throw ideas around without aiming… or acting… You are going to have a bigger problem than applying social media to your business. Ask yourself why you are going to be applying social media? Is it going to be for reputation management, brand awareness, or lead generation? 7. Add your social media profile links to your email signature Do I really have to explain that? Need an incentive? Check out the way Hotmail grew by leaps and bounds using the footer in email. 8. Plan the use of social media within your company Who should be using the company profile? Who should be adding content on a daily basis. It is extremely important to build out an internal social media policy . This should probably be one of the first things you deal with before entering a social media campaign. 9. Remember to build a content portal before pushing information through the Twitter-Face-Linked-verse. It is extremely important to build out a hub for your content. You need to be driving people (users) from different sites to a central location. Why? It is easier to capture information and sell. 10. Don’t stress. Have fun. Social media is not something to absolutely flip out about… it is important to understand and time will tell on the “importance” of the tools being created on the Internet. Remember to keep up-to-date and look for ways where social media can help strengthen your traditional communication strategy.

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10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing