I watched the movie “Kick Ass” the other night, and oddly, it got me thinking about social media (It’s a curse we in the business of sm live with. Be kind.) I came up with a list of how social media gives companies and individuals superpowers:

1. Invisibility: When you monitor and listen to the cloud to find out who is talking about you and your competitors and what they are saying, you are enjoying the benefits of a cloaking ability. They can’t see you, but you’re sizing up who your audience is or could be, as well as finding out exactly what they need from your type of product or service. Invisibility helps you prepare and fill gaps.
2. Empathy: The ability I hope you get from using the first ability. The reason you do all that looking and listening is to understand the audience and to empathize

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I wonder often how anyone could have coined the phrase

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

when we’ve all been at the hurtful end of prejudicial words that cut deep, and sometimes leave wounds that last longer than a bruise. Especially when I have also seen words inspire and start movements. And, for me, there has been nothing more powerful than the first time I said my son’s name allowed to him moments after his birth. That kind of power is staggering…humbling.

I believe in words and the roots of words. I was the kid who looked forward to that section of the SATs where I had to match a word to its meaning by dissecting its Latin root and hoping I got it right. Maybe if I’d actually ever truly prepared for those tests, I would have even done well at… [Read More]

There are two different lines of thought in marketing – the feel gooders and the analyzers. Feel gooders look at trending, human behavior, and endeavor to uncover what makes human beings tick. The analyzers look at hard numbers, popular word choices, times of day people are in the stores, and anything else you can assign a hard and fast number to. Feel gooders rely on intuition and gut to guide them. Analyzers rely on facts and figures.

See where I’m going with this?

Ideally, every office would have a balance of the two. You want there to be some hard and fast numbers behind everything, but you do have to rely on gut and human emotion to guide your decision making process in marketing as well.

Online, there is a new kind of marketer emerging. This marketer takes the best of both worlds – the feel good stuff and the… [Read More]

Fellow Social Deviant, Taylor Vick, and I met with a business associate, Celeste Rains of Flying Otter Marketing, at local hot spot The Patterson House, Nashville’s answer to the mixology rage sweeping the nation. It is a dimly-lit and not very air conditioned lounge in a historic house where drinks cost between $10 and $15 a pop, but which create a flavor explosion in your mouth proving that chemistry and alcohol DO mix.

Trying hard to sip, not gulp, our concoctions (to stretch the flava AND the dolla), Celeste brought up a good observation about new clients. Sometimes people assume that because you do one part of the industry that you also do another — like assuming that because you work in social media, that you also know graphic design or how to build a web site. That would be like asking a plumber to… [Read More]

Several months ago, I was asked to moderate a panel at the MEIEA Conference for Advanced Social Media Strategy. It was a great opportunity and I was thrilled to be asked to moderate. The conference coordinator asked me to put the panel together as well, and frankly, that was the hardest part! None of the panelists were compensated for their time beyond admission to the rest of the conference so imagine my surprise when all of my top candidates for the panel agreed to sit on it. Here they are:

Fran Vincent – Retro Island Productions/MySpace for Musicians
Katherine Stimson – Bennett Law Office/Suman Entertainment Group/Farm to Market Music
Janet Hagan – Social Deviants/Naxos of America
Tony Grotticelli – TOGA Entertainment

Each panelist I invited has exceptional experience in social media marketing. Fran even wrote MySpace for Musicians, and… [Read More]