What follows is an edited excerpt from Engage! Anyone who has ever worked in corporate marketing, advertising, and branding is more than familiar with a brand style guide. It’s how we ensured that the brand was represented as intended through marketing aesthetics and messaging – including detailed usage instructions on font, style, color, language, placement, positioning, etc. It is our bible and adherence to its tenets and instructions is strictly enforced. However, with the unstructured proliferation of social media within…
Engage: A Video Introduction
Engage helps businesses and brands build, cultivate, and measure success in the new web and it is now available online and hopefully in a book store near you. Please consider reading the book and if you find it helpful, please also help me share it with those who are looking to learn about social media and how it can help them in their work. This book and all that’s in it, was written with passion and dedication over the last…
Q&A: Personal vs. Professional Branding in Social Media
Dan Schwabel is not only a personal branding expert, he’s someone I’ve come to know and respect over the years…and definitely someone I consider a friend. We recently sat down to discuss Engage and the resulting interaction culminated in a wonderful discussion that explored the state of professional and personal branding in the era of new media. How do you define “Engage” and do you believe that people and business that fail to engage will cease to exist in the…
Engage is Now Available at a Bookstore Near You
Following a special and unforgettable debut at SXSW Interactive, I’m excited and thankful to announce that Engage! is available at bookstores near you. When you invest so much into something that you believe will change the way people think, you can’t wait to tell the world. This book is written for you… It helps champions, decision makers, and executives understand the impact and potential of new media and how, when, where to integrate it into mix. It also helps you…
ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media
What follows is the entire version of my recent post on Mashable, “The Maturation of Social Media ROI“ Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary…
The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing
Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And,…
Engage
UPDATED I’m truly excited to share a bit of news with you… While this isn’t the formal launch of my new book, today represents a significant milestone for me. As of today, Engage is available for pre-order on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, and Borders, with shipments expected to arrive sometime in mid-to-late February. Other sites will go live soon. This post represents the first time that I’ve publicly released the title…Engage. And, I also join good friends…
The 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business
What follows is the unabridged version of my post on Mashable, “The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration.“ An overnight success ten plus years in the making, Social Media is as transformative as it is evolutionary. With every day that passes, we are presented with increasing reports that showcase the impact of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs within small and large businesses alike. As a result, we can now visualize the state of adoption, understanding, and implementation in different…
The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers
I spend a great deal of time working within the B2B sector, among other things, and social media is a growing and or pervasive program within a comprehensive, integrated communications and service strategy. In almost every scenario I’ve encountered, executives, marcom and service executives, and brand managers have generally assumed that social and interactive activities and programming were ideally best suited for consumer applications. However, as we recently explored, in Social Media, it’s not just business, it’s business-to-business. Indeed, Social…
The Evolution of Social Media and Business
Social Media is fundamentally transformative and is rapidly evolving the architecture of business, communications, and the dissemination of information and influence. Today, there are businesses that engage in social media and those that do not. Those at least experimenting with the formidable, yet shifting landscape of intelligence and communication are learning how to adapt and connect in a new world of conversation, networking, and influence. Those that have yet to evaluate the opportunities and advantages for socialized marketing, service, sales,…
