Anyone who watched the Super Bowl ads of 2012, will surely remember Coke’s animated iconic polar bears who reacted to the action on the field throughout the full four hours or so of the game, coupled with a live feed during the game showing the bears watching. According to reports nine million people across various platforms checked in to see the polar bears.

The Polar Bowl was creative and forward thinking, but it was still about watching…

This time around Coke “wants you” to get involved in the narrative of their “Coke Chase” story — which is about “three teams of people – cowboys, showgirls and badlanders – who are lost in the desert and see the mirage of a glistening bottle of Coke — then vote in real time to decide who wins a battle for the Coke, and the result is revealed at the end of the game.”

But here is the kicker in the game – players are pitted against other players. They can also sabotage—in other words, vote down—the teams they oppose. It triggers a competitive spirit geared to propel engagement.

According to Coke executives, they want to “gamify the game” via a real-time television, web and social media campaign that taps consumers’ votes to determine the storyline of the spot. They hope that consumers are up for another game, while watching the Big Game.

Pio Schunker, SVP of integrated marketing at Coke said, “People aren’t going to necessarily interact with your product unless you tell a compelling story. This is the most engaging and compelling way in to talk about Coke as the ultimate thirst quencher.” A bit promotional I think, but on point with the interaction part.

It is clever. It is about cross-media storytelling and engaging players in a narrative. It is about extending the conversation through a host of platforms across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram, for which custom content has been crafted. Additionally a press conference with the losers has been recorded for YouTube. It’s a marked change from last year’s Polar Bowl that had a singular tactic for social-media channels.
By the looks of the game Coke conceived, it is likely that they will beat their numbers of last year. It is also a very cool way for Coke to maximize their estimated $11 million investment.
But more importantly, Coke may very well be responsible for permanently turning around expectations of the Super Bowl ads of 2014.

It’s what we would expect from a market leader.

The simplicity of it is amazing, but the impact of it is astounding… In one day, Facebook’s new Organ Donor sign up option had 6,000 people enrolled, through 22 state registries, as opposed to less than 400 on any other normal day.

Ingenious, really…

The Facebook feature allows users to share their decision to be an organ donor on the website. More than 100,000 did sign up on the first day Facebook announced the option. The DMV has offered that option for years, but apparently the numbers had remained dismal, by comparison.

With this feature, Facebook has provided a bolt of hope to the more than 114,000 Americans who currently have their lives on hold while waiting for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs. Although I am sure that Facebook never considered this program as falling under anything resembling a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, it surely feels like it.

But not quite, and here’s why…

Most CSR programs are geared to applying a company’s core competencies to advance social change in a way that contributes to business results and gives a company a competitive advantage. Most such programs, offer public good but are, in essence, keyed up to mitigate the impact of a company’s activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Most programs are either philanthropic in nature, as in donations for disaster relief or for the public good in general; support educational awareness campaigns, as in safety or health; or are sponsorships, as in cash or product giveaways, or employee volunteer time.

None of this applies to Facebook. Its Organ Donor program is on another CSR plane.

By providing a link on the site that connects organ donors to online donor registries, it has simply provided a “public good” by doing what it does best – connect – in this case, organ donors who would not have had a chance to come forth in such a public way or who had not thought of registering in the first place, with organizations that can offer hope to the 114,000 waiting…

But as with anything else, it always starts with one person’s mission and goal and in this case it was Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, who teamed up with an old friend Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who alerted her to the dire need for organ donations. Sheryl, made a judgment call and decided to find a way “to fix it.”

Although only an available option in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, still, with its millions of users, Facebook has now turned into a powerful tool to save lives…

Bravo.

This tweet showed up recently: “The Uni of Iowa is offering a $37K scholarship to its b-schl fr the bst tweet by a prspctive MBA student.”

Strange to see this from an academic institution… It makes the “de rigueur” misspellings that are so intrinsic to the Twitter format seem OK.

Still, if the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business wanted to break through the clutter and get attention from potential business school candidates, it certainly got what it wanted, for this tweet went viral with a whirlwind velocity. Why not? Seems an easy and quick way to vie for a full scholarship. Even business publications were all over this including Bloomberg, Business Insider and BusinessWeek blog, as well as the French publication Atlantico, albeit the latter promptly declared that this would attract mediocrity rather than motivated students.

Not necessarily.

It will also attract savvy students wishing to compete on a creative level rather than just on their background information. It also fits in very well with Tippie’s need to get more aggressive in finding students to fill their school’s full-time MBA program, considering that they only had only 307 applicants. Moreover, it keys in with the school’s admissions officers’ increased curiosity in knowing a candidate’s social media voice in addition to their academic achievements.

It’s a creative pioneering gesture to interest applicants through a medium that really belongs to that generation. But the required tweet to compete for the $37K is in addition to the regular application form and resumes, not instead of, and that seems to dull the ”newness” of it all. So, armed with all the traditional information required, except for the usual 800 to 900-word essay, just how much weight will the tweet carry when it comes to in winning the scholarship?

There is something that I do not quite get…. I am thinking of all those spelling bees that kids try so hard to win over their early years, only to have a college give permission to misspell as a lure to apply.

It’s a clever attention grabber, but a stunt none-the-less, one that does not seem to be on message for an institution of higher learning…or is it “hier lrning.”

Spirit Airlines jumped on Weiner-gate faster than most, with their well-known marketing prowess. From the same company that targeted Arnold Schwarzenegger a couple of weeks ago, they promoted, this time around, a Weiner Sale that is “Too Hard to Resist,” with the text of the offer reading, “Hurry to book now, before this sale gets hacked.” Tasteless? Definitely, but somehow irresistible and in line for a company who’s president/CEO once shoved himself in an overhead bin to defend his company’s carry-on charges.

And then there was Jon Stewart, with his spoof on his purported “best friend” (college roommate). And then Letterman and Craig Ferguson took off, elongating the tale and at some point, after a few more comics took their turns, the laughs cooled off and the ridiculousness of it all set in.

Curiously enough, the media circus itself sobered up and some even took offense at the ongoing tasteless battering of Weiner.

Still, repercussions from the comic frenzy continued. For example, in the wake of the Weiner scandal, actor Alec Baldwin might now seriously consider running for mayor of New York City in 2013 when it was Congressman Weiner that had been considered as the Democrats’ frontrunner. And Eliot Spitzer, who embarrassingly enough always gets asked for commentary on political figures involved in shocking sex scandals for obvious reasons, said he sympathizes with Rep. Anthony Weiner — naturally.

Imagine – a simple matter of a miss-key on Twitter, results in laying bare (pardon the pun) of personal habits and preferences, exposing personal moral digressions to an unforgiving public.

Miss-key or not, it is a gross lapse in judgment to even consider the use of a medium that is meant for public consumption in the first place. Political figures, by the nature of their chosen paths, give up a certain right to behaviors that can be seen as inappropriate to the “political image” that got them elected in the first place. They are held up to a far greater public moral compass than the ordinary man in the street.

It doesn’t take a trained political PR guru to understand that the greatest sin from the perspective of the public was not the miss-keyed Twitter moment, but rather not being truthful at the moment of crisis. It is a flaw in judgment which should not have happened, given the PR training he must have received on the way to becoming an elected official. He could have joked about it, made some attempt at “Oops, I did not mean to put it out there” (another pun intended) or any other type of Mea Culpa. But to blatantly lie about “questionable certitude” is such a PR 101 lesson – that it becomes incredulous. Where were his advisors?

Message to remember – social media is very social indeed, as opposed to private media.

With the disastrous and colliding events taking place in Japan continuing to eclipse all other considerations and rendering everything not related to such devastation meaningless, I took a moment to reflect on a top-scoring slogan that came to mind, used not so long ago for AT&T’s long distance phone service — “reach out and touch someone.”

How far our communication systems have evolved was starkly evident during the recent Tsunami disaster when phone communication systems crashed all around and when it took a different medium than phone systems, as in social media — to “reach out and touch someone.”

According to The Telegraph, “mobile carriers over the weekend were limiting voice calls on Japanese networks with NTT DoCoMo limiting up to 80 percent of the voice calls in Tokyo and elsewhere.”

As such, the swiftness with which services such as Google’s “person finder” were organized in response to the earthquake, as well as the services of Twitter, Skype, Facebook, Google (News Alert) and Mixi, (Japan’s most popular social networking site), which miraculously worked well throughout the emergency, remains a matter of wonderment. It was primarily through these services that information about friends and relatives seeped through, domestically and internationally, and that the “lucky” relatives were reunited.

Just consider the Tsunami of 2004 that hit Indonesia and its surroundings. The power to connect people directly was in its infancy and the search for survivors was still mostly relegated to phone communication systems, which at best offered intermittent connections. Also many Londoners discovered during the July 2007 terrorist incidents that mobile phone networks were unable to cope, as hundreds of thousands of customers tried to call or send a text at the same time. As to the Haiti earthquake of 2010, with most having little or no Internet access, social media only partly made up for the lack of information coming from the affected area, with CNN playing the largest role.

At a moment in time, when we are overcome with the destructive force that Mother Nature inflicted on Japan, with as yet unknown consequences affecting global economies and impacting market needs worldwide, there is still something meaningful to reflect on – the continued ingenuity of man, to find the means, with which to “reach out and touch someone.”

It’s that human element that we can count on most…

Jeanie Buss

Entering her twelfth season as the Lakers Executive Vice President of Business Operations, Jeanie Buss is responsible for overseeing all of the Lakers business operations including relationships with the team’s broadcast partners, sponsors and season ticket holders. She serves as alternate Governor for the Lakers and is currently a member of the NBA Labor and Planning committees and is active with several charitable causes including the Lakers Youth Foundation.

Q: The NBA has embraced social media as a tool for engaging its fans, but, as someone that is very active in the social media sphere, just how is Social Media an important factor in the growth of the NBA’s popularity?

A: David Stern has been the commissioner of the NBA since the mid-80’s. He has always recognized the concept of growing the game of basketball through marketing and it happens that social media is the next level of marketing. Because of that leadership philosophy there are currently 7.6 million Facebook users who “like” the NBA compared to just 2.6 million who “like” the NFL. The younger demographic utilizes and values social media and because the NBA adapted and created specific content for those medium it will only assist in growing NBA popularity in an authentic way.

The Lakers organization chose to use social media early on as a way to connect our Lakers fans without a “middleman” who might not deliver our message the way we wanted to be heard. Controlling our brand has been an important criteria when choosing sponsorship and broadcast partners.

Q: You are among a handful of NBA executives that utilize social media platforms as an avenue for communicating with both personal and professional audiences. What made you decide to utilize social media and how important do you think it is for team executives to be active in the space?

A: Team officials must realize that your fan base is not just your season ticket holders. We have found that the Lakers popularity is not only in Southern California but exists worldwide. The Lakers have 1.8 million followers on Twitter, most for any professional team. Our home arena, STAPLES Center, has a capacity of about 19,000 so it doesn’t take long to realize that the majority of Lakers fans have never had the opportunity to attend a game in person. As a team executive if we can show that we can deliver those kind of number allows us to maximize our radio and television broadcast rights fees because that translates into ratings points.

Personally, I have over 36,000 followers with the goal of connecting with fans that isn’t about the X’s and O’s of basketball. I tweet about which celebrities are in attendance that night or what has become a tradition for my Twitter followers, I’ll post a photo of Coach Jackson as we are driving to a home game. Just one more way to engage and grow our Lakers fan base.

Q: Perhaps like no other team in the NBA, or any other professional sports league for that matter, Lakers games are known for their celebrity support. A regular season game at Staples Center offers plenty of excitement both on and off the court. What role has this intermingling of celebrity and team played in developing the Laker brand into what it is today?

A: The celebrity factor at Lakers games was first introduced by former owner, Jack Kent Cooke, when the Lakers arrived from Minneapolis in 1960. He invited then America’s Girl Next Door, Doris Day, to sit on the floor creating a mystic for the VIP seats. Jack Nicholson bought his courtside seats (yes, he pays for them) in 1972 way before Magic Johnson created the Showtime era. Jack and other Lakers celebrities are not just making an appearance, they are true fans of the game. We have worked to create a celebrity friendly atmosphere so A-listers feel welcome and secure in what I believe is the safest facility in the country. My dad (Dr. Jerry Buss) once told me that when an LA resident has friends visiting and “wants to see a celebrity in person” where are you going to take them to guarantee they will see a real life celebrity? A LAKERS HOME GAME!

Q: Can you comment on the new deal with Time Warner and its expected impact on not just its existing sports broadcast outlets, but on fans as well as any other challenges that this might present?

A: The new broadcast agreement with Time Warner Cable allows the Lakers to connect more closely with our fans because we will have more input into the messaging and branding but in game and with shoulder programming which we feel is crucial to future growth. What we are most proud of is the fact we are starting two channels, one in English and the other in Spanish. The Spanish language channel will not be just an overlay but actual original programming for the audience. One of the drawbacks of the new deal is that the Lakers will no longer be carried on over the air broadcast partner, KCAL. However, the Lakers were one of the last NBA teams to be carried on an over the air channel and this has been the migration in sports the last few years. Even Monday Night Football is now on ESPN.

Q: The Lakers Youth Foundation has actively sought to encourage education. But besides the Foundation, Lakers is heavily involved in charity work,. As an example, its swift reaction, together with the NBA, to the devastating earthquake in Haiti of a few years ago. What is the overall criteria for involvement and do you play a direct role in this process?

A: The Lakers Youth Foundation is another aspect of Lakers philosophy of connection with our fans and community. My sister, Janie Drexel, is head of our foundation and has created a mission statement to assist the youth of Southern California as well as promote the game of basketball. She has done an excellent job working with schools and after school programs to refurbish basketball courts as well as build reading centers dedicated to the memory of our beloved announcer, Chick Hearn. We have several fundraisers during the season including a golf tournament, a Basketball 101 event and silent auctions during our home games.

The anticipation surrounding the Super Bowl ad rollouts, is rivaling that of the game itself, for smart marketers have unleashed the ad buzz weeks ahead of the game, with multi-week contests and teasers, extending their exposure of ad expenditures of up to $3 million for prime Super Bowl, well past just the traditional one-time showing during the game.

The trigger is the Super Bowl, but the power to engage before, during and past the game, is the Super “Social” Bowl — a marketer’s dream .

Harnessing emerging venues definitely amortizes costs and in, and of itself, almost rationalizes the significant expenditure for major companies, a point that I am sure is not lost on those CFOs who rant relentlessly about ROI and the Super Bowl ads.

Social or not, it still all starts with old-fashioned TV spots, but spots so designed to draw in an audience through its humor, focus on causes, or creative story line, ones that trigger social media conversations. It’s by no means the first year that the Super “Social” Bowl is tapped, but it certainly seems to be the year social networking charges onto the field.

Whether pre-game, during game, or post game, the social-media maneuvers taking place this year seem to play into a two-pronged universal strategy: to leverage the investment and key into consumer behavior. In terms of leveraging, it will be interesting to see who is truly able to capitalize on their Super Bowl venture. There are companies that are already standing out from the crowd such as (among others), the integrated strategy that Teleflora has with their mobile apps; E-trade’s creative concepts in utilizing their wisecracking baby character to interact with sports commentators and anchors; Audi’s first use of the hashtag on its major TV spot during the games’ first break, hoping to have viewers interact and spark conversations on Twitter during the game. Volkswagen, armed with research that TV viewers go online to check out sports-news sites during the Super Bowl broadcast, plans to respond by doing a takeover of ESPN’s mobile site during the game. Others are showing outtakes from their popular commercials on YouTube and are advertising on YouTube during the days before the Bowl. Still others, like Budweiser, are tying in TV “tease” commercials with ads on Facebook pages.

As to consumer behaviors, a recent survey from Lightspeed Research estimated that nearly two-thirds of viewers aged 18 to 34 who plan to watch the Super Bowl, also plan to make use of a smartphone. Of those with a smartphone, 59% will be sending emails or text messages about the game, 18% will be checking out ads online from their phones, and 18% will visit advertiser websites. And, according to the survey, almost a third, or 32%, will be posting comments about the game on a social network.

The Super “Social” Bowl will surely set an all time record for the fusion of social media with broadcast media, broadcast events and live events everywhere in the communications and advertising industry. Super Bowl or not, marketers should take note…

We introduce our next guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Ed Keller, CEO, The Keller Fay Group.

Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, a specialist market research firm focused exclusively on word of mouth marketing.  He is a Board member and past President of the Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), a board member of the Advertising Research Foundation, a board member of Bazaarvoice, and a member of the U of Pa’s Annenberg School’s Alumni Advisory Board.  He is Past President of the Market Research Council, and has lectured on word of mouth marketing at Wharton, Columbia Business School, NYU’s Stern School, and other leading universities. Keller speaks frequently to business audiences about word of mouth marketing, and is quoted frequently in the trade press.

Social media is all the rage today among marketers and communicators.  The allure of Facebook, Twitter, Four Square, and other social networking sites, along with all the apps that help to fuel conversation and allow marketers to connect to consumers, is a powerful draw.

But here is something that might come as a big surprise to some of you.  Despite the tremendous attention being paid to social media, and the meteoric rise in the number of people using social media, when it comes to brand-related conversation, the overwhelming majority of word of mouth (WOM) still takes place the good old fashioned way – face-to-face.  In fact, over 90% of WOM is offline, and less than 10% is online.  And of that 10% which happens online, only 1-2% comes via social networking sites or blogs.

How do I know this?  Because every week since 2006 my firm conducts research with Americans ages 13-69 and asks them to report to us about brand-related conversations in 15 different product category areas ranging from fast-moving consumer goods such as food/dining, beverages, personal care products, and household products, to higher consideration categories such as automotive, technology, and travel.  And in every single category, the story is the same.

How could this be, you might be asking?  Are the statistics about the 500 million people who have Facebook accounts somehow incorrect?  Or the fact that people are spending a growing amount of time each day on Facebook?

No, they are not wrong.  But what is not as well documented is the literally billions of brand impressions that are created daily (yes, daily) via offline conversations.  The online stats are easily measured, and therefore well reported.  Offline, while harder to measure and therefore less well reported day in and day out by the marketing and tech press, is massively larger.

What is more, our research shows that offline WOM is more credible, and more likely to lead to purchases than online WOM.

This research does not mean that online-oriented strategies are wrong or a waste of money.  In fact, the internet is playing a growing role in helping to fuel word of mouth.  Over the last few years, the internet has become just about as important as a medium that sparks conversation as TV.  But it’s not the medium via which the conversations actually happen.  If you want to know more about the different roles that TV, the internet and print all play, I would encourage you to read the research we have published recently about this.

The conclusion that I hope you will draw from our research is that in an era when word of mouth is the dominant force in driving purchase decisions, brand marketers need to think holistically.  It’s not enough to focus just on social media.  Think about your online strategy, yes, but that should include your website, and internet content, and ratings and review sites, and online advertising – in addition to Facebook and Twitter.  Think, as well, about ways to encourage offline conversation.  This can come via experiential marketing or in-store activity, whereby people can see, feel, and touch your product.  (Apple stores are a great example.)  Advertising can and does act as a powerful conversational spark, as well.   In fact, more than 20% of conversations are driven by ads.  Advertising plus word of mouth is a powerful combination.

Marketing success in the 21^st century requires new approaches.  But just because the pace of technological innovation is often dizzying, don’t overlook the power of basic human connections to drive your brand success.

It’s finished.  It’s over.  Gap has retracted the new logo and put back the old one  – for now.  The company has acquiesced to a consumer outcry that flooded the Internet with derisions, mockeries, parodies as well as amateur re-design suggestions, as the new logo rolled out. The whole journey, from new logo roll out to retraction, took just a few days.

But it took two years for the company to develop a new logo earmarked to better represent the evolving Gap brand, one that is “more contemporary and current and honors the heritage of the Gap brand with the blue box but takes it forward” according to Louise Callagy, a Gap spokeswoman — plus an untold sum of monies spent.

The social media frenzy that followed Gap’s new logo roll out, could probably have been predicted, given that the brand is such an iconic one and so beloved by the very generation that view themselves as bona fide, self-proclaimed and self-appointed critics and use social media as their main communication tool.

As a matter of fact, had Gap’s recent logo change been based on a social media experiment strategy, it would have been brilliant, for the unplanned rapid fire online reaction has all the elements that would make any marketer salivate. The problem is that it wasn’t planned and it seems to have caught Gap by surprise, causing them to scramble in response with knee-jerk reactions.

Initially, the hastily made-up response came from Gap’s president and its corporate communications VP, who spoke of the logo as only “starting a conversation,” although clearly after the fact and not the original intent.  Then the company opened up this “conversation” by indicating that it would be pursuing a “crowdsourcing project” in the near term. Whether that project was earmarked for a logo or not, time will tell, but the timing of it is certainly coincidental.

Based on the Gap case, marketers would do well to consider as to who owns their brand and who decides a brand’s corporate identity – the corporation or its mass audience? Or better yet, who leads it, the corporation or the crowd? Can a brand’s identity even be Crowdsourced?

Brandchannel commentor Gunter Soydanbay notes that, “without any kind of even mildly specific strategy or direction, crowd-sourcing anything is a futile exercise. Unless Gap is actually suggesting that the brand is crowd-sourcing a business plan.”

In the end, it is a game.  Look, it’s not critical whether a logo is blue in one corner or the other, or whether the font is Helvetica or another.  What is critical is that consumers today want a say as to what ensues with their beloved brands and corporations of such iconic brands and will need to be aware of this and find a means to be inclusive, well before a logo change is planned, implemented and monies are wasted.

It might be smarter to choose to CrowdSource a logo, or have a social media competitive design competition with input by brand advocates who are not necessarily design professionals (but can be also), and then take it all back to the drawing board and come up with a look that “feels” inclusive, assuages the masses, but still has the corporation in charge of their own brand identity. Or have a well-prepared plan in place to better prepare consumer advocates for a coming change.

The Gap case feels like a chicken and egg story. What comes first?

In my blog of February 10, I was both intrigued and skeptical about the“ Pepsi Refresh” initiative. Intrigued, because it represented everything that an ideal interactive campaign can be – “creative, innovative, highly engaging and very popular, while building on the brand in a fun and social way.” Skeptical, because Pepsi was to grant large sums of money ($5,000 to $250,000) to charities (within selected categories) based on a populous vote of “friends and peers.” Critical thought as to urgency or evaluation of need, did not come into play.

Still, my skepticism faded rather rapidly as Pepsi came up with another angle within its campaign — its “Do Good for the Gulf” Refresh campaign, which has awarded 32 grants each month worth $1.3 million. Now Pepsi has invited consumers to submit ideas that could “refresh the communities of the Gulf states,” through July 16 and has pledged another $1.3 million. Starting August 2, consumers can vote on the ideas they like best. Finalists will be announced on September 2, and grants will be awarded on September 22.

For big brands to spend money on major causes is not new. Nor is it new for big brands or companies to get behind a disaster and offer funds and equipment as needed. If it is also somewhat self-serving, and is based on an ulterior marketing motive, so be it. Still, marketers would do well to note how well the Pepsi’s Refresh campaign worked in that it has empowered the consumer and rallied the public-at-large to come up with ideas in support of a disaster, in this case, the Gulf Oil disaster.

It’s a fine line to cross, however, and can be seen as opportunistic.

In this case, Pepsi has gained recognition for outstanding corporate social responsibility (CSR). It has earned it in a substantive way, for the Refresh Project has given more than $7 million in the first five months of the year and expects to invest at least $20 million in worthy causes.

And it has raised a populous conscientiousness as to charities. How does that get rewarded?

Twitter can sometimes be foreboding. One logs in, takes a look at that ominous “What’s going on?” question and may think . . . “What is going on?”  And that person may not have an answer.  Sitting there? Drinking water?  Procrastinating on a project?

Looking for something to discuss, the “Twitter-blocked” may browse through the main feed searching for inspiration.

Stanlopez forget about it.

Covid My buddy broke his collar bone.

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Ronmalone My 12-year-old is great at Photoshop!

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Mikehilton Time to close the laptop.

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Nothing.

The Twitter-blocked may look around the office hoping for something to tweet about. Color of the walls maybe . . . or perhaps how quickly the coffee has gotten cold.  Nothing is clicking.

The Twitter-blocked is generally not using Twitter to talk about “coffee” or “sitting there,” instead he/she uses Twitter to build a brand presence. The Twitter-blocked understands that endless tweets about the brand won’t work and that there needs be a genuine connection with the Twitter community. A trusted network builds meaningful relationships, thereby strengthening the brand. Sounds easy, right?

But what to tweet about?

When I have “Twitter-block”, I resort to my personal “C.R.A.S.H.” formula:

Comment
Reply
Ask
Share
Help

Comment
Every time you go into Twitter, tweet something. Anything.  It could be “Good morning, Twitter,” or “Sitting down to start my day,” or anything benign.  Just write.  Once you do that, the rest comes easy. The hardest part of filling out a blank page is writing the first sentence. Just get something out and be natural.  Twitter isn’t always about broadcasting your brand; sometimes you can just talk. Casual conversation builds trust within your network and identifies that the brand is supported by real people. It is easier for people to connect with a person than it is for them to connect with a logo or product.

Reply
Reply to someone. Find a tweet and reply to it.  It doesn’t have to be Shakespearean, just say, “@neatfollower Good point!” or “@hungryfollower Yeah, pizza sounds good now” or “@Xfdgg Why do I need 10,000 followers?”

Ask
Ask a question. The question could be something like: “How does one get past Twitter-block?” Or it could be a discussion question about your industry. Or something personal like “What is going on with all of you today?” Questions encourage conversation and the more people that you respond to, the more conversations evolve. Check your @replies frequently and make sure that you aren’t missing out on connecting with someone.

Share
Share something. Either tweet a link for a blog you’ve read or retweet something interesting someone else said.  You can pipe in many RSS feeds into FriendFeed and easily post them on Twitter straight from there.  You can even tie your blog into FriendFeed so that it tweets whenever there is a new post.  There are Twitter applets and Firefox apps that will help you tweet from wherever you are browsing. Make it a habit to simply share what you find as you find it.  Link retweets are the most popular type of tweet for a reason.  Most people are there to find news and websites, and if you post interesting things people will notice you more.

Help
Help people. Use Twitter Search (or some other 3rd party search system such as Monitter.com or any of the Twitter desktop applications) and find conversations that you can contribute to. Search by whatever your expertise is and jump in – give advice, help people that are asking questions and peddle your smarts.

Use hashtags (#) on your topics so that they reach a broader base of people, such as: “Writing press releases is good for your SEO! #PR #SEO”. When you use hashtags the tweet shows up in a feed on Twitter Search, which many people follow.

Using the C.R.A.S.H. formula once a day keeps you a valuable and contributing member of Twitter. Leveraging your own expertise and the benefits of your brand in each of those steps will build awareness. But most importantly, C.R.A.S.H. will help you get rid of that dreaded Twitter-block.

The British should be familiar with parodies.  After all they invented the form…

BP is ripe for mocking, as witnessed by the launch of the faux BP Twitter account, @BPGlobalPR,  which already has outdistanced BP’s real Twitter stream, attracting nearly 60,000 followers, compared to the company’s 7,000 followers.

While it is true that the company’s real twitter account @BP_America offers continued updates about actions taken toward a solution of the international calamity, no one buys that the effort alone is commendable.  And yet, in reading and watching all the hyperbole that the company puts out, all the gaffes made by its CEO and all the meager attempts at “talking” to a public through full page ads in the NY Times, daily, the company continues to exude a righteous behavior that is irritating and obnoxious, as well as arrogant and disdainful – certainly not characteristics that can endear a company to its many publics.

In the words of a tweeter, “The engineers (may) be busy but PR (folks) are (in) hiding.”

And so, while BP’s PR advisors seem to be AWOL, people turn to mocking.

It’s a real circus out there.

Twitterers are tweeting about the now “extinct mermaids” to the “sharks getting entangled in oil geysers” to changing the word catastrophe and agreeing to call it a “whoopsie daisy.”  The faux account has sold “BP cares” T-shirts with the profits from the sales going to the nonprofit Gulf Restoration Network. Apparently its humorous blasts have been re-tweeted by everyone from filmmaker Michael Moore to singer Michelle Branch.  And then there were preposterous headlines made by Kevin Costner and numerous TV appearances by Bill Nye, the Science Guy, the children’s show host who is apparently now an authority on the issue.

Apparently the faux twitter account’s fictional character “Terry” who has steadfastly remained in character, weakened and fell out of character when asked as to why this effort, to which he answered, “Companies screw up and then they hire folks like me to come in to make it look like they’re doing something while they figure out how to make money again.”

Well, there you have it – the public mocking of a company…

The curious thing is that according to a dialogue that Ad Age had with BP spokesman Toby Odone, he said that, “he wasn’t aware of any attempts by the company to have the feed taken down.” In playing the role of a real BP spokesman, the bogus one took the opposite stance – the one that the real BP should have taken in the first place by saying, “I’ve heard rumors of fake BP PR accounts, and I assure you if we find out who is in charge of them, we will annihilate them.” In further mocking the company, he added, “BP is doing everything we can to save our reputation and hopefully salvage some oil out of all this.”

Here’s advice for BP: hire the faux twitter account owner for advice as to next moves or push your PR folks out of hiding and make them unleash a PR campaign that is based on critical thought and one that is substantive…

We introduce our fifth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Kathleen Kaufman, published author and educator.

Kathleen Kaufman is the author of environmental fiction and an inner city educator. She is well known in the social media community as a Facebook influencer and entertaining blogger. She can be found on her publisher’s website, The Way Things Are Publications, on Facebook and on her website.

Facebook marketing is a dirty word. No one wants to feel like they’re friends with a person who is trying to sell them a product, be it a book or a copyedit.  The most successful Facebookers, the ones who have converted their page into actualized business, are not marketing, rather they are participating.   It’s not as easy as it sounds; for one, you have to mean it.  The simple act of being genuine on Facebook is easier said than done.

I am certainly not an expert on how to juggle professionalism and sincerity in a virtual world, but I have learned a few lessons along the way as to what not to do.

1.  Mass Emails: I currently have approximately seventy-three messages waiting for me on my page.  I have no intention of reading them, for the most part, because they are all invites to ‘The Best Opening Night Of The Best Play Ever!’ or ‘Open Mic Night At The Improv!”   Thus, most of them are for events that are in Boston, Chicago, or New York.  It becomes painfully obvious that the sender has no idea that I live in Los Angeles, and even more painfully obvious that I am just a number, a member of their growing horde, an inadvertent member of a fan club.

Who would have thought? You are in a mall, walking by a Macy’s store and oops! You get an alert on your smart phone that Macy’s has a special discount for you if you walk in, right now.  Or, you are driving approximately 10 blocks from Taco Bell, and there goes off that alert again – this time with an offer from Taco Bell that’s well worth a stop, rather than the one you had planned on – that coffee shop across the street. It gets better.  If you walk into a store often enough, you will be able to click as you enter on the smart phone location and immediately get on a customer loyalty program, enabling you to add points for future purchases, much like frequent flyer programs with miles.

Of course, you have to be a location app user.

If this sounds futuristic, it’s not. It’s here. Apparently all this was made possible by Foursquare, the location-based social network that introduced a free analytics tool and dashboard last month, giving business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments.

Innovative marketers have managed to figure out how to maximize this into win-win situations. Just consider — Pepsico and the likes, sell more products, stores get more traffic and the consumer gets special offers geared to his/her likes and tastes.  And there’s another convenience soon to come.  As companies start to turn Foursquare (or other custom location applications) into a virtual loyalty-card program that offers customers discounts or other rewards for shopping, consumers get to toss all those customer loyalty cards that stuff up wallets and use smart phones as a simple replacement for it all.

Savvy businesses like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi, are using information reaped from smart phones that can signal someone’s location, to get live information about when and where people are shopping, track store traffic and note when their most loyal customers visit and market to them accordingly.

Of course, you have to want to be tracked and it’s good to remember that being a member of the likes of Foursquare is a proactive choice. But while it was fun and games just to check out who is sitting in the cafe across the street to find friends to meet up with spontaneously, so much information about you, presents a whole new scenario.

It is not only friends who are looking for you now, rather marketers, who are following your moves…

This may cause a momentary shudder (as in Big Brother Is Watching YOU, right out of George Orwell’s book, 1984), but my guess is that in 2010, it is the accepted reality — more so, if you get such advantages as loyalty points, discounts and free sodas.

It may just be that if Big Brother is, in fact watching, it no longer matters…

We introduce our fourth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Tom Searcy, who helps companies in finding business solutions.

Tom Searcy, co-author of  “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company”, author of “RFPs Suck!” and founder of Hunt Big Sales, is a sought after business solutions expert for small to mid-sized companies.  Follow Tom’s thought leadership through his blog: www.huntingbigsales.com or access his resources at www.huntbigsales.com.

I remember watching a documentary on nudists when I was of an age that I couldn’t yet buy my own “nudist” magazines at the drugstore…the ones with the brown wrappers…if they even bothered wrapping them. The documentary talked about the “freedom of nudity”, its “natural state” and “the beauty of the human form.” It was confusing as hell to me- because the human form, at least the ones at the colony, were not beautiful. Even at distance and with discreetly placed black-box-blockouts, these were some pretty unattractive people. Their nudity not only put me in a position to look at things I didn’t want too, but it answered questions about people, (surgery scars, stretch marks, the body’s response to gravity over time for example), that I was not asking.

The documentary was about a microscopic sliver of the population who had made a distinct choice. But we are all living naked now. You, me, our companies, our children. We are all naked. And we will be beyond naked very soon- (BTW, I don’t know what “beyond naked” means but I think it involves Flickr™ photos of our last set of x-rays and dental records). Are you ready to live naked?

YouTube™, Flickr™, Digg™, Twitter™, Facebook™, LinkedIn™ and the rest of the usual suspects of the social media revolution are creating a naked world. Every customer experience, every shipped product and online FAQ answer, each touchpoint in the chain of your business is open for scrutiny and discussion. You may be aware of this, which puts you ahead of the huge brands out there being lampooned every day in painful and direct ways. But what is your strategy?

I work with small to mid-sized companies who are trying to grow quickly. One of the things that we work on is their market image. One of the nice things about everyone being naked is that it’s easier to do the necessary research on a prospect company before you see them. But…It works in reverse…(sometimes when I work with companies they forget this part).

Here’s what I tell my small to mid-sized companies:

• Control – You don’t have it any more, so take a deep breath and stand tall, proud and naked. You can control your integrity and your authenticity. Focus on that. Don’t focus on the buttoning-down of over point of entry and exit to your perceived brand machine. That’s like trying to grab the wind with a sack.
• It’s Never Fair – Of course attacks are unfair. No one is trying to provide a ‘fair and balanced’ story, as if there ever is one. Don’t waste time trying to make their attacks ‘fair’ by offering your point-by-point answers. The bell has rung- you are not going to un-ring it. You can just respond.
• Fast and Good – A quick response that is reasonable is much better than a slow response that is perfect. Do you see Toyota out there floundering with the slow and perfect story? That’s because slow in the naked world is by definition imperfect.
• Find Your Voice – As a writer and speaker, I go through a number of exercises to make certain I am writing in my voice. Not what I think to be the “professional and homogenized” voice. In the heralded brands around the world, one of the key elements to the rankings is their consistency and authenticity of their voice. You need to make certain that the voice is an authentic voice.
• Be 3-D – All the movies are going 3-dimensional for the same reason; the audience expects a different experience. You have to be multi-dimensional in your market message. A website with a never-changing brochure of product/service lists doesn’t cut it. Customers want the multi-dimensional experience. Give it to them. Videos, photos, blogs and ever-changing content.
• Thousand Points of Light – Your brand is no longer just the crafted message of your marketing firm. The touchpoints are now your brand- employees, customers, vendors and competitors. You have to be out there knowing what is being said. You can’t survey once a quarter and keep track of the voices. This has to be a daily part of someone’s role. Key word searches and tracking make it easier- but it has to be done constantly.

On this blog-site, you can read past entries to see what it is like to live naked. Noemi’s blogs provide examples of how ugly in can look when big companies try to hide. This is especially true for those companies who have not yet realized that the emperor not only isn’t wearing clothes, but his wardrobe has been shredded. But the question for you should be “What is my strategy for living naked?”

When thinking through your strategy, include these questions:

1. On a simple Google search of my company’s name and my name, what comes up and in what order? Is it what I want to come up? How can I change it?
2. How do we tell our story to the world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? How is the world telling our story to us in the naked world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? What does it mean about us if no one is telling our story?
3. Who are the examples of companies, regardless of industry, that we look up too in the naked world? What can we learn from them?

Fortunately for me, living in a naked world requires neither diet, nor exercise nor surgery. But it does require confidence and a strategy. What’s yours?

The next video by The Pollack PR Marketing Group as part of our monthly 25th anniversary celebration:

The curious power of modern computer technology has allowed us to view the world around us through our webcams and iPhones, and in so doing, we have been able to super-impose images, video and sound over our view of reality. The result: augmented reality.

This new trend of entertainment technology has led to some remarkable applications.  For example: face-recognition technology uses your webcam to put a Transformer’s head on you; it allows you to try on virtual sunglasses as well as translate street signs by looking at them through a mobile device, or bring animated characters to life on your desktop with a webcam.

While this entertainment technology is very entertaining indeed, what are the implications for marketers? There is currently much discussion on the potential marketing value of augmented reality technology, what with new mobile applications and online programs popping up everyday, but there is little clear regard for measurable and useful marketing tactics.

Certainly, the use of augmented reality to develop viral social media campaigns is viable. According to Businessweek, it has been done by Kia Motors, Nestle, Frito Lay, and Wise Foods however with mixed results.   Still, it is expected that $170 million will be dumped into mobile augmented reality advertising within the next 5 years.

Viral videos, tactically, are only one slice of the augmented reality pie. Take for instance what iPhone apps Layar and SekaiCamera are doing. Both apps have taken augmented reality and geo-positioned this together into a whole new virtual universe, where consumers can hold up their iPhone, see information about the business in front of them, as well as its phone number and Wikipedia article. SekaiCamera takes it further, and allows users to post their own comments (virtually) on that business or location. Already a huge success in Asia, the SekaiCamera phenomena could potentially transform the world into a series of post-it notes visible to anyone who holds up their iPhone or Android. The ability to slap a comment on a restaurant’s physical location makes Yelp look like child’s play.

The marketing potential for an app like SekaiCamera trumps imagination. Coupling geo-positioning and augmented reality is a great way to get the word out about one’s brand. In one sense, the whole wide world can be an advertising platform wherein companies can post messages in physical locations right where their audience is. Creative campaigns could even include treasure hunts, whereby customers who uncover particular messages in particular locations, get free prizes or discounts. Or companies could award discounts to consumers who post in the sky about their product. Brick and mortar locations could encourage customers to post virtual tags all over the wall, telling other customers of their positive experiences there.

The overarching point is that the online world has now come full circle and the once global universe of social media marketing is now being transformed into a geo-located virtual reality  – right back in the middle of your target audience’s physical location.

While it will take time for SekaiCamera and other apps like it to catch on in the U.S., location “check in” apps like FourSquare are already transforming the market. The trend is inevitable: mobile technology and augmented reality will bring customers back into the real world and away from their global social media safety net. Online or off, it is still about location, location, location.

Associated Press

Almost a year ago, on April 17 of ’09, in my blog titled, Bringing Brands Down Without A Safety Net… I wrote about Domino’s nightmare customer-generated video, showing disgusting and filthy antics from a server in preparing a pizza.  The video exploded virally on YouTube, causing unspeakable damage to the 50-year old reputation of the company.  As it turns out, the story had a happy ending, with Domino’s ultimate brand pivot — as they reformulated recipes and opened up a first-ever transparency communication on social networks.

Now it’s food giant, Nestlé’s turn to battle social media wars, as Greenpeace-backed environmental activists used social media in the last two weeks, to attack Nestlé over its purchase of palm oil for use in their KitKat candy bars and other products.  As reported by Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal, the protestors “have swamped Nestle’s Facebook page with negative comments, used Twitter as a loud speaker and, posted a negative video on YouTube.
The activists claim that, “Nestlé is contributing to the destruction of Indonesia’s rain forest, potentially fueling global warming and endangering orangutans.”  Yet according to Nestle, only 1.25% of all the palm oil Nestlé used last year was from the Indonesian firm.

Not much chance that Nestlé will be responsible for destroying any rain forest in the near future.  Clearly much ado over nothing, but that’s not the point.  It’s out there, regardless.

Look, attacks on brands by individuals or consumer groups are not new. The “genie is out of the bottle” and there is no stuffing it back in anymore.  Companies will have to live with the fact that social media has offered all those who wish, a speaker’s platform with a “mega-bullhorn,” giving credence to all, without thought as to “from whose mouth it cometh.” Social media channels have enabled the volume to be turned up and the speed to quicken as to damaging rhetoric, leaving brands exposed and naked, with little recourse how to halt the onslaught.

Nestle’s contemporary dilemma has elicited various responses from professionals.  Some have suggested that Nestlé should temporarily shut down its Facebook page. Some have suggested they should cut down any two-way communications for now. Others have encouraged the company to post changes that will abate the protests, which it did, but the din continues. Nestlé itself had asked YouTube to take down the videos, but unfortunately only after the videos had spread virally beyond control.

I would offer that preparedness might be the answer. It always was so, but traditionally crises plans were more geared to accidents, product failures, whistle blowers or general company disasters, such as manufacturing delays.  A crisis communication plan clearly should include social media “attacks” from consumer groups, replete with a multi-media planned response approach.

I would add that a policy of ongoing transparency, coupled with daily interaction and consumer engagement can, with any luck, catch a disgruntled comment that can get an immediate response, well before it spirals out of control.  May be time consuming to do, but necessary…

The Army had it right – Be Prepared.

We introduce our third guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary, Jay Baer,  who writes in the below blog, on forward thinking social media programs and their composition.

Jay Baer is one of the world’s most popular social media strategy consultants and bloggers. His Convince & Convert social media blog is consistently ranked among the top business blogs, and he speaks to tens of thousands of marketers annually at conferences and conventions. Founder of five companies, he’s a digital marketing pioneer that started online in 1994. He’s worked with more than 700 brands since then, including 25 of the Fortune 1000 (Nike, Pepsi, Sony, Cadbury, Conoco/Phillips, Procter & Gamble). He’s a tequila-loving forest dweller with a passion for tequila, and spreads his “strategy first, then tactics” message like a digital dandelion.

I’m sitting in a restaurant in Cincinnati last night, surrounded by televisions with the sound turned down. The bartender approaches, and asks if I’d like to hear the TV. I say “sure” expecting him to saunter over to a monitor, and turn up the volume. Instead, he reaches under the bar, and pulls out a Soundog unit.

The Soundog is an ingenious device – a small, personal speaker with switching capabilities, enabling me to listen to whichever game I prefer without bothering nearby patrons.

Happily using this handy new technology, I was struck by its utter usefulness and the fact that it neatly addressed a common (although perhaps not world-changing) problem.

Why can’t your social media program do that?

The difference between “selling” and “helping” is only two letters, but the gap is in reality, much larger.

The best – and most effective – social media programs aren’t based on promotions and message distribution. Instead, they revolve around removing friction and uncertainty for potential or current customers.

Nationwide Insurance has a terrific iPhone app that allows you to document a vehicle crash in real-time, including photos, collection of the other drivers’ insurance information, and other key details. They aren’t trying to sell you more insurance – at least not at that point – they are being helpful.

Geek Squad makes its living providing technology configuration and repair services, via BestBuy stores everywhere. But yet Geek Squad has a YouTube channel that includes hundreds of videos showing people how to do it themselves. They aren’t trying to sell you services – at least not at that point – they are being helpful.

Geek Squad Founder Robert Stephens was asked about the contradiction of a services company providing helpful videos at a conference where I spoke. He said that the reality is, their best customers are those that can do some of it themselves. If they can assist them initially, they’ll appreciate it and turn to the when they need more help.

That’s understanding the difference between selling and helping. That’s understanding that social media success is a long putt, not a tap-in. That’s measuring results on an annual basis, not a weekly basis.

That’s what you should be doing.

Start today by conducting a Helpfulness Audit for your company. Talk to your customer service department, or survey your customers and document the top 10 problems that customers have with your product or service. Then, strategize ways you could make those problems disappear by providing better content (as with Geek Squad), faster response (as with Nationwide), or better access to help (as many companies are doing by launching online customer support communities using Get Satisfaction or other systems).

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 not only paved the way for German re-unification, but also broke the devastating communication barrier that had been in place since 1961 and led the way for what would soon be the opening up of communications with the entire Eastern bloc.

->Back to 25 PR Defining Moments

->View the Complete List

Social media as a news reporting function became reality when Twitter became the first to report flight 1549’s crash landing in the Hudson River approximately 10 minutes before traditional media picked up on the story. “Citizen” journalism gained new respect and would play a vital role in the Iranian revolt six months later.

->Back to 25 PR Defining Moments

->View the Complete List

It is arguably widely known in the public relations world that “social media press releases” can tremendously impact the appeal of a press release to both the media and consumers. Popularized by communications professionals like Brian Solis, these releases offer a different tone in language and often include multi-media assets like photos and videos  as well as widgets that make the release easy to share. In the past two years, wire services have caught onto the trend and now provide social media release templates in their service packages.

While social media press releases do make an otherwise dry communication tactic more interesting, the real potential of how press releases can evolve has yet to be realized. There are many emerging tools that can make releases compelling, interactive and even viral. Thinking outside of the “press release box” can add a mark of creativity on press communication that not only garners more attention but also invites the recipient of the release to be more involved with the news.

When constructing a social media press release, one should consider assets not traditionally used for multi-media and develop a narrative around the release that will captivate and engage a wide audience.

Following are examples of the potential for creative interactive elements that can be used:

1. Slideshows

Many companies already know about the power of SlideShare. The ability to create a presentation, upload, and use on other sites as embeddable content, can be an invaluable communication tool. In the context of press releases, this can be a way to organize the message and make it interactive. Also using SlideShare provides the added benefit of having your messages exist in a social and sharable online network.

It is often awkward to have more than one photo on a release, but a SlideShare embed will allow for as many photos as you please and can be easily browsed by the reader. Another use is presentational communication. Putting key points with engaging images can be a visual way to punctuate information within a release.

In particular, releases about new products, studies, or other stories that require a great amount of support data, a slideshow, can encapsulate the information visually for the reader and encourage media to re-use the element in their story.

Podcasts may bring visions of radio production with a mixer board, headphones and cables into one’s head. In reality, podcasts are very easy, extremely popular and effective. In the increasingly mobile world, podcasts are an upward trending way consumers access information. For the purposes of a press release, it can be a one-shot deal or part of a regular program of communication.

Podomatic is a powerfully simple website that allows one to freely record, host, and embed podcasts. Once recorded, they can be shared, downloaded, embedded or distributed throughout social media. Putting key messages into audio in the form of a “news report” or interview can be a powerful way to demonstrate the newsworthiness of the story and also deliver an element that the media would be inclined to use in their coverage.

3. Video

With innovative sites like xtranormal you don’t need a camera, actors, or location to make a movie. You can simply type in a script and use animated characters, in a setting you choose, to speak the lines. This, like the others, can be easily embedded and distributed online.

Many in the blogosphere have taken advantage of xtranormal and often make  humorous movies that offer commentary for their audience. This can also be a valuable tool for press releases. Putting information from a release into a visual conversation creates a shareable element for media to use, but also delivers the messages in an engaging way to viewers.

Here is an example of one I made to demonstrate the point:

All of these methods ultimately accomplish a broader objective of bringing messages out in a variety of vehicles to reach a broader audience. Using sharable tools like the ones mentioned here provide a level of interaction in social media releases that images or twitter buttons alone won’t accomplish. They also provide more reasons to push that “Share This” button.

Last week a Digital Trenches discussion noted the rising trend in interest surrounding daddy bloggers. But in face of this week’s eMarketer published report, mommies still have that edge with marketers.  And for good reason. According to the report, 68% of new mothers began using “mom-centric social media” after having children, and 33% increased their use of social media in general. Couple that with the current estimate that mothers control 80% of household spending, then it becomes clear why marketers prefer Moms. Senior eMarketer analyst Jeffrey Grau commented that moms come together to “share information about product deals” – a valuable bonus to marketers.

Is the value of mommy bloggers in their buying power? Or is it more about their networking power? The evidence is in what marketers approach mommy bloggers for: endorsements. If their value is really buying power, then simply advertising on a “mom-centric” social network like BabyCenter or Circle of Moms would likely get the job done. While that may be happening, the activity getting the most attention in 2009 by, not only the media, but the FTC, was product reviews.

One can easily conclude then that the value of mommy bloggers is their ability to influence other moms and to leverage their buying power. If that is true, then a mommy blogging is something akin to consumer journalism and marketers would be wise to take note.

Here are five ways marketers can earn a mommy journalist’s respect for a highly valued third party endorsement:

1. Construct meaningful, personalized and targeted pitches about products that clearly appeal to the blogger.
2. Don’t expect a positive review, but an honest one, and do not try to tell the mommy journalist what to write.
3. When following up, be respectful of time and do not spam with email or voicemail messages.
4. Read the blog before pitching so that there is a thorough understanding of what they do or do not write about.
5. Thanking a mommy blogger for writing about the product can build a long-term professional relationship down the road.

Mommy bloggers have an invested interest in their readers and approaching them with a journalistic respect will show that marketers truly understand the value of a mom.

We introduce our first video of our new monthly video series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary. This video addresses the role of social media in customer service.

We introduce our second guest blogger of our new monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary, who encourages, in the below blog, those who are still hesitating to engage in social media to do so.

Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling and president of Charlotte-based BuyGitomer, gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings and conducts Internet training programs on selling and customer service at www.trainone.com. He can be reached at salesman@gitomer.com.

It started like a small bunch of burning leaves. A little MySpace, here and there  –  a blog or two. And then the wind picked up. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Growing from a windstorm to a firestorm, social media is a tornado running wild over the Internet plains.

How social are you?

How serious are you about social media?

REALITY: You can’t ignore it. Hundreds of millions of people are involved so far, and it’s just a few years old.

I tried to ignore it for a while, but it soon became apparent that this was the new, new wave – about a year ago I became a player.

I admit I have an edge. I have a lot of readers and followers who are interested in what I have to say and want to know what my immediate thinking is. That’s two of the values in social media – it’s immediate and it’s informative. It’s also fun – that’s why Facebook and YouTube are worth BILLIONS

The major networks in social media are growing by the second…

• For photos, it’s Flickr – worth billions

• For videos, it’s YouTube – worth billions

• Social networking for the younger set starts with MySpace – an original

• Social networking for the growing and grown set, it’s Facebook – worth billions

• To get connected and network with the business set, it’s LinkedIn.

And for that private message, there’s texting – it’s easy for me – I have an iPhone.

And that is just a partial picture. There’s more…

• For individual expressions, there are weblogs, or blogs.

• If you want to say a few words, there’s micro-blogging and interconnecting – also known as Twitter – worth billions.

• For chronologging, it’s Wikipedia – worth billions.

• And, of course, there are your personal website and business website. Priceless.

All of these medias are, or try to be, socially engaging – sticky if you will. All of them are, or try to be, passed on – viral if you will. Or, better stated, if you tweet, are you good enough or bad enough to be re-tweeted?

I have made a serious commitment to “socialize,” in other words, to expose more of my personal self and my business self through social media. I will still maintain my value-based philosophy, but I will personalize it, and humanize it to a point that others are attracted to it, benefit from it, and want to pass it on to others.

I will be social and viral at the same time.

So, what does this mean to you?

What’s the opportunity to you and for you?

Why should you get involved?

Social media is an opportunity, a new frontier, a space in cyberspace that gives you an individual place to play, build awareness of you and for you, brand yourself, and potentially profit.

You have to ask yourself …

Where’s the beef?

Where’s the fun?

What’s the value, both to you and others?

And how – if desired – do you monetize it?

Well, unless you’re one of the few people in an ownership or founding position of these social medias, your monetizing opportunities are at the moment limited – in spite of various claims by “experts.”

Here’s what I recommend to get going and get positioned, so that your value – either in social, business, fun, or money — can be realized:

• Sign on.

• Establish an account on each of the major medias.

• Post something.

• Tweet something.

• Connect with someone.

• Do it yourself.

• Do it every day.

And learn by updating as much as you can on your own.

Social media is fluid – it moves and changes daily. It’s text, audio, photo, and video. It’s every media and it’s every second. It’s current and it’s constant. Ever see a section of a website labeled “latest news” and when you click it, the last update is from 2004? Not good.

The Internet is instant. Social media is instant. And you have to be ready to participate consistently, and in a meaningful way, if you want to win.

Please don’t wait.

© 2009 All Rights Reserved