Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
For Hire! Searching for My Next Career Opportunity
You may have heard around the social media water cooler that I am looking for a job. It’s true!
The economy is in the tank and jobs are limited—especially marketing, PR and communications jobs. Thankfully, I have been able to tap into a network of friends and colleagues that have been supportive, generous, and helpful.
People have been asking me “What are you looking for?”
One can hardly provide a smart response in 140-characters, no matter how many years they have been on Twitter.
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Saturday Morning Reads: South by Southwest (SXSW) Cares — Japan Tsunami & Earthquake Relief
I would be completely remiss if I didn’t put a spotlight on SXSW Cares this weekend.
If you aren’t familiar with South by Southwest (SXSW), it’s one of the largest conferences and festivals in the world that brings music, film and interactive together every year in Austin, Texas. On the eve of this year’s Interactive portion, an unthinkable act of nature hit Japan and devastated a country and its people.
I wasn’t able to attend SXSW this year and while I missed seeing my friends and connecting with new ones, I’ll be honest—I didn’t miss the often narcissistic ‘see and be seen’ party atmosphere. That said, the beauty of SXSW is that it is what YOU make of it.
That is why I was so proud when I started hearing the news about SXSW Cares, which was started by my friends Leigh Durst and Deb Ng (along with Rob Wu of CauseVox, Jess Lin and The American Red Cross). It would have been so easy to get swept up in panels, book signings, parties, socializing and photo ops, but this team was heads down in trying to make a difference and trying to help those who needed it most.
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Tags: #sxswcares, American Red Cross, CauseVox, Deb Ng, Japan, Japan Tsunami & Earthquake Relief, Leigh Durst, Rob Wu, SXSW, SXSW Cares | 
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The Return on Investment (ROI) Craze Won’t Last
For over three years, I have sat back and witnessed the resurgence of a concept that seemed to be largely ignored or only found in dusty marketing books: Return on Investment.
I am referring to the buzz (or is hype a better word?) around social media ROI. What I find interesting is that marketing management is requiring social media ROI to qualify its worth before implementing it. Smart marketers know that it is impossible to determine ROI (a financial calculation) without having net profit, sales and investment numbers, which are not available without actually having done something. Could it be that demanding social media ROI is a stall tactic?
The next logical question then is if there is such a keen interest in social media ROI, why isn’t management requiring the same for all marketing, communications and branding? We should have those numbers readily available, right? (By the way, cost per lead is not the same as ROI.)
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Get to Know Your Customers—It’s as Simple as a Digital Handshake
It’s 2011, do you know where your social media strategy is?
As a marketer who has been in the social media game for a while now, I understand why companies struggle with social media. There is much misunderstanding between the concept and the tools—and the benefits of either. There is confusion as to why social media tools can’t be used just like e-mail, direct mail and advertising. There are also power struggles internally for who should own social media and who has control over what is for public consumption.
What’s a Marketer To Do?
That’s the question author and social media expert Paul Chaney discusses in his latest book, “The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.” (Paul’s first book is “Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition.”)
The answer? Start a conversation. However, the smart thing to do before diving into any conversation is to understand the new rules of communication, why they matter, and the five trends turning the business world upside down.
- Consumer Skepticism
- Fragmented Media
- Loss of Control
- Niche Marketing
- Customers are in Control
Trust me. Your customers will thank you for taking the time to understand these tectonic shifts.
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Dear Bloggers: You Are Making it Too Difficult to Share Your Content
This is something that has been bothering me for over a year and I am not sure why it took me so long to write about it, because it’s really three simple things that stop me from sharing content.
I really want to put a spotlight on the smart thinking I come across that I think deserves attention, but sometimes it’s just too time consuming to do so. Perhaps others are feeling this way too? After all, we are all busy and strapped for time.
This isn’t an all-inclusive list (I am sure you could add more), it’s just my list of what stops me from sharing blog posts—even from some of the most popular and experienced bloggers. I don’t have all of the answers on how to fix this (technologically from WordPress to TypePad to Blogger), but thought I’d kick off the conversation.
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
