Archive for January, 2012


Peering deeply into the soul of creativity

Jan 8th

32 comments

Can you guess the subject of this photo? This is a predawn picture of Australia’s Lake Eyre salt flat taken by the extraordinary photographer Murray Fredericks.

Every winter for eight years, Fredericks rode his bike into the heart of the most featureless place on earth and camped for five weeks — to take photographs.  I have become obsessed with his pictures of “nothing.”  He peers into nature to translate the beauty of extreme desolation.

I have played the same mind tricks with my own photography for years. I’ll sit in one place in a forest or on a pier and see how many different photos I can take within a three-square foot area. I am always surprised by the results when I block out the world and concentrate on pure creativity.  I have not done this exercise for a couple of years but was inspired by the “Salt” series.

While on vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, MA, I found the most extraordinary beauty in the eroded clay sea cliffs.  The photos below are of dirt … but look deeply and I think you’ll agree the natural elements of our world can produce results as stunning as anything from the hand of our favorite modern artists …

You might be wondering what this has to do with blogging or social media marketing.  Everything.

Stop for a little while.

Plant your feet.

Look deeply.

Now, find the beautiful things that nobody else sees.

Top illustration: Salt 8 – 120cm X 150cm Digital Pigment Print on Cotton Rag, Edition of 7 by Murray Fredericks 

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New Years Substitutions. A {growtoon}

Jan 6th

3 comments

Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events.

Kacy Maxwell is a guy who loves his work, family and a good challenge. See more of his cartoons at EverythingIsMedia.com.

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Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do

Jan 5th

55 comments

The ever-awesome Mitch Joel wrote a dizzying blog post forecasting that 2012 is The Year of More.

He points out that 2012 will be a year of technological and information abundance:

  • Social sharing will intensify and choices will multiply
  • The marketing stage — even for small businesses — will be more global
  • The opportunity to target in a hyper-local way will create an unprecedented push of “deals”
  • Devices are still multiplying, not consolidating
  • Brands will be fighting hard to connect with us more directly and more personally
  • Sorting through the information density today is difficult and becoming impossible.

Mitch is right of course (just don’t tell him that I said so).  But here is the grand irony. All of these trends fly directly in the face of what consumers really need right now.

We need LESS.

Consumers are paralyzed by choice and overwhelmed by information density. I just viewed a TV ad for something called Deal Chicken. I thought, does the world really need another freaking way to get coupons?  We can’t handle the number of deals we’re already getting!

Time-starved consumers just want to be told what to do. How do I save time? How do I save money? How can I have more fun? Just tell me.  I don’t need to sift through 1 billion results on Google.  I have far too much choice.  I just want to know.

Isn’t it ironic that companies like Facebook and Google are collecting so much information about us to presumably make our decision-making more streamlined and efficient?  Does anybody feel that their information flow is more streamlined today?

Mitch is right. 2012 will be the Year of More.  But that is in direct opposition to what consumers need.  There’s a business opportunity in there somewhere, isn’t there? How are you helping your customers sort through complexity?  How will you tell them what to do?

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It’s time to evolve the social media mindset

Jan 4th

47 comments

By “Social Steve” Goldner, Contributing {grow} Columnist

It’s time to bring social media marketing to an end.

I do not make this statement lightly.  In fact it is pretty humbling.  How do you think I, SocialSteve, feel about telling you about the end of social?  Damn … not sure if my name can live on and switching it to DigitalSteve … just doesn’t have the same ring.

Seriously, I want to tell you why we need to stop concentrating on a social media strategy as the end game.  Far too many people approach social media as a separate entity.  Another organization in the company.  Even separate from marketing.  And this is the problem that needs to be solved.

eMarketer stated that “Integrating Social Media into Business Process a Challenge” — “When it comes to integrating social media into the overall business, companies must evolve and change structurally, culturally and on a personal employee level to succeed.”  And what this means is that we should stop talking about social media as its own country club.

It is time for the real leaders to emerge and set the course.  These leaders need to have a holistic marketing methodology (strategy, plan and promotion, operations, and tracking) that MUST include all digital elements:

  • Demand generation (CRM)
  • Digital asset development and management (could be a service)
  • Email
  • Display and PPC (pay per click)
  • SEO (organic)
  • Paid SEO
  • Social outreach (go where the conversation is, not just your Facebook and Twitter)
  • Social engagement (listen and converse on your assets and off)
  • And don’t forget all things must be brought to mobile as well

A mandate for a holistic view

Let me highlight why the holistic approach is a MUST.

I’ll step away from social to make an unbiased point.  Let’s take “display.”  What is the value of display?  Some may be cynical about its value, but consider this scenario.  Let’s say Connie Consumer visits Brand X’s site to view smartphones and packages.  What if you could store the user action and information, and then later provide a display ad for Brand X when Connie visits another site?  Through this integrated approach, the value of the display ad goes up exponentially because it is contextually relevant to Connie’s activities and reinforces her original interest in Brand X.  If you just went about displaying your ad in a silo, you could never accomplish the same results.

But this siloed approach is primarily what is happening with social media.  So long as it is stand-alone and lacking contextual and promotional relevance, it will continue to have little success for you.  What I am really suggesting is that we evolve our social media marketing approach to be a “mentality” as opposed to a “practice.”

As long as we think about social media as platforms as opposed to a channel that reinforces a brand position, creating greater awareness, increasing views on brand content, increasing sharing of brand content, winning earned media, unleashing referrals, and word of mouth marketing, we will never reap the true potential of an integrated marketing strategy.  And my experience shows me an abundance of siloed exercises developing marketing and social media strategies.

A path forward

Here are my suggestions on breaking in a new social media mindset:

  1. Make sure you have an integrated media plan – one that includes print, radio, TV, complete digital (yes social is in there)
  2. State specific quantitative marketing growth goals (i.e. awareness; brand recognition and reputation; views of all assets; brand sharing of content, referrals, and overall word of mouth; earned media)
  3. Baseline goal parameters and continually measure
  4. Make adjustments as required based on metrics

So while I will still evangelize social media (because my name is SocialSteve after all!), I am suggesting that YOU stop talking about social media in your company.  Make sure you stand out as a marketing leader and address the objectives of growth in customer awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy.  Use the full digital marketing palette available to you.  If you really do this and produce a complete marketing strategy and plan, I am sure social will be in there.  But you don’t have to speak about social media explicitly.  It can be our little secret.  OK with you?

Steve Goldner is the Senior Director at MediaWhiz where he leads the social media practice. Steve has been a marketing executive for the past 20+ years and engaged in social media for the last 4 years. You can follow him on Twitter @SocialSteve and visit his own blog at http://socialsteve.wordpress.com .

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