Things We Should Ask The ROI Question About Before Social Media

September 01st, 2011

Let's call him "ROI Guy"

“What’s the ROI of Social Media?”

That’s the question that gives me ulcers when asked it.

Easy now, old-school business folk, I don’t have a problem questioning the value or return of something that takes potentially both time and money from your business. Any smart business person would do that.

How We Are Killing Facebook

February 15th, 2011

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.” – Helen Keller

(You KNOW this post has to be epic, I started it off with a Helen Keller quote. Shazam!)

Facebook. Half a billion people. One of the greatest things to come out of the Internet for many reasons, without it there would be so many social media consultants that would go hungry and have to go back to shilling “video email!” from 1998.

The biggest threat to Facebook and it’s success isn’t a change in format, structure or infrastructure. It’s user apathy. And more specifically when it comes to Facebook for business, event apathy.

The Awesomeness of Being a 2.0 Author

January 11th, 2011

I don’t know how authors did it years ago. You pour your heart and soul into a book, it hits the shelves and you hope people like it.

I’m such a spaz that I don’t think I could handle the lack of immediate validation and/or rejection.

I’ve been amazed since UnMarketing came out. The immediacy and coolness of tools has blown my mind. Waking up everyday and reading tweets in real time about people reading the book makes me smile. Every. Day. It’s the passive conversation our readers are having with each other that was untappable (my new word) previously.

Twitter mentions

The Five Words That Kill Your Blog

December 07th, 2010

You’ve done the hardest parts of writing a blog post: Gotten the reader to your site, evoked a strong enough emotion to make them feel they need to add to the discussion and leave a comment, and they submit it and see this:

“Your comment is awaiting moderation”

7 Tips On How to Make Your Conference Panel Rock

November 29th, 2010

Pubcon Keynote Panel

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
— Aristotle

Revenge of the Social Media Nerds

November 22nd, 2010

"On my command, unleash Twitter"

One of the things I love about social media is people stand-up for each other. The art of “having your back” has returned. As very recent examples show:

1. The Cooks Source Revenge: Editor uses someone else’s recipe/article, writer takes exception, editor sends condescending reply, citing that all the internet tubes are “public domain” and she should charge her for using the article. UNLEASH THE GEEKALANCHE! If you Google “Cooks Source” you can see this turned into a worldwide story. Advertisers were bombarded with calls and emails to pull their support from the magazine.

Caring About Your Customer Service Screw-Ups

October 05th, 2010

People seem to think Customer Service and Marketing are separate departments. I say they go hand in hand. There is no better way to increase or decrease your brand impression than through customer interaction. Every person in your company is a marketer, especially those on the front-lines.

Not an actual image of the chef

Telesummits: You’re Doing Them Wrong – Video

August 11th, 2010

Originally I was going to call this post The Bus Ride, Best Guy and the Bald Spot, since I hopped on a 6 hour round trip bus ride while I’m in NYC, to get to PA to see the best guy I know and he shows you his bald spot, but dang nabbit, that takes too long to explain.

This get-together has been over 5 years in the making (we had never met in person), so Michael Port and I decided to film us chatting about one of our biggest online pet peeves: being asked to speak on telesummits. Have a look:

Why I Changed My Coffee Religion

July 21st, 2010

The following is an excerpt from my new book “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” due to hit the shelves September 7th!

Scott BC (before coffee)

I have a morning ritual that I know many of you share. Coffee around here is a bit like a religion. You choose your brand, you pick your favorite, and then you stick with it. In the Toronto area, Tim Horton’s is the church of coffee. It is a part of the culture up here, part of the vocabulary. When you say you’re going for coffee you go to ‘‘Tim’s’’ or you’re going to go to ‘‘Horton’s’’

50,000 Tweets and All I Got Was Everything

June 07th, 2010

Recently I surpassed the 50,000 tweet mark.

Holy monkeynuts.

That’s roughly 5,000,000 characters of typing, assuming an average of 100 characters a tweet.

And it’s been worth every one of them.

So the question is why? I’ve practically written enough on Twitter for five books, am a member of the 50/50 club (50k tweets, 50k followers) (I totally just made up that club right now. You’re welcome. I’m like the Jose Canseco of Twitter when he joined the 40/40 club in baseball, except I doubt I’ll be making an appearance on celebrity boxing anytime soon)

It’s not the fact that I’ve spouted off on Twitter 50,000 times, it’s the content of those tweets. The majority of them have been conversations. If you take a look at my stats you can see that almost 75% of my tweets have been replies. Over 37,000 of my tweets have been points of conversation. That’s why Twitter works for some and not for others. Twitter is a conversation.