Category Archives: blog

October 4, 2011

8 penny wise, pound foolish social media blunders that businesses make.

By Giselle Bisson

Q: “What’s the worst thing you can do with social media?”

A: “Ignore it.”

And that’s what most corporations (and small businesses) did in 2009 and 2010. They ignored social media, or they barely paid lip service to it. Business tried to co-opt social media and failed miserably. Businesses tried to ignore social media and it didn’t go away. It turned around and bit them in the…well you know.

They made many of the same “penny wise, pound foolish” mistakes with Social Media that businesses make with PR.

If you ignore the media, they won’t go away. Well, if you ignore the people (the social media) they won’t go away either. Better to act than react.

1. Outsource your social media monitoring and blogging to India. (Watch the TV show “Outsourced” for some hilarious examples of why the culture of India might not relate to your purely American brand they’ve never used before.)

2. Equating something new with “young” and take a misguided trendy approach to social media hiring. (“He has a shaggy haircut like Chad Hurley and cool eyeglass frames! That must mean he knows something about social media and our target Gen Y audience!”)  While sometimes you can luck out and get a very sharp intern who will do your social media for free (for a while) why would you trust your most visible communications to someone who doesn’t even sit at a desk inside your company?

3. Assuming that the audience for Social Media is Gen Y. (The average age of a Facebook user is Gen X, 38, with half the users firmly in the Baby Boom Generation.)

4. Pay a fortune for boring, self serving fake “user generated” videos that never went “viral” on You Tube. (The Hollywood film “2012″ with it’s fake user news coverage on You Tube was particularly transparent.)

5. Build a visually tricked out Fan page that nobody ever “likes” and then spam Twitter with advertisements, contests and coupons.

6. Tweet or post as an impersonal logo or “the brand”, instead of an engaging personality. (Do I really want to be a Fan of Victoria’s Secret Corp.? No. But I might want to be friends with a Victoria’s Secret Super Model.) Do I want to be a Twitter friend with a fertilizer company? No. But I might want to get Tweets from a funky, clever cartoon cow who talks about composting and gives me organic gardening tips. Do you really want to be friends with GE? But you might want to learn more or ask questions about about a specific GE product you own.

7. Tweet or post positive comments as a fake employee or fake customer.  This can be a good tactic if you hire someone outside the company to do the posting.  A little positive news can help turn a negative tide around. Just don’t post from a computer that can be traced to an email address or ID inside your company!

8. Lump Social Media in with SEO/SEM and online marketing. Search Engine Optimization, (SEO) is about generating hits to your website in Google. SEO has absolutely nothing to do with managing your company’s brand reputation or responding to media inquiries when a problem suddenly goes viral. This is why so much early Social Media seemed as intrusive and spammy as a direct mail campaign. And why so many social campaigns were ignored until they erupted into viral PR disasters.

Leave a comment | posted in blog, damage control, Facebook, public relations, search engine optimization, Twitter

March 7, 2011

What’s in a name? Everything!

By Giselle Bisson

I was talking to a client the other day who wanted more visibility. They had a hideously long URL for their company website.

I rolled my eyes. I immediately knew they were doomed to failure unless they changed their name.

I asked: “Is there any way you can find a shorter url?”

My prospective client hemmed and hawed about how attached he was to his ridiculously long company name.

There’s a reason why Google and Yahoo succeeded — and a host of other earlier search engine contenders like NorthernLights and AltaVista bombed.

There’s a reason why YouTube won the video wars and early contenders like, “uh, um, uh, whats their name, I forgot” failed.

Because YouTube is a freakin’ awesome brand. It says what it does. It has attitude. It’s memorable. You can spell it. It rhymes with things. It’s unique. It works in other languages and other cultures.

When I named my business, I spent an entire rainy day on Go Daddy typing things in at random until I found “Visibility Shift.”

Even though it’s not short, it’s memorable, it says exactly what it is.

And it’s relevant to my consulting practice, which is about shifting your visibility to a new level. I was absolutely floored when I discovered such a great website name was even available — and for $7.99.

There are several reasons you want to take time to find a truly memorable stand out URL:
- easier to type – a long or unmemorable url discourages people
- memorable - (One word is best. Two words are ok. Three is just too much.)
- Searchability (SEO) - A name that isn’t unique is going to bring up millions of search results in Google. You want a unique URL so you are the first and only hit in Google, without having to pay $$$$ to Google for adwords.
- International localization - remember the web is global and your name has to translate easily into other languages — so it’s better if it’s not a word in any language.  Run your name past some friends who speak other languages and some translation software and make sure it doesn’t translate into something embarrassing. (The Chevy Nova flopped in Mexico because “No Va” means “Won’t Run.”)
- Put less words on your site, more pictures. Especially remember that the web is international and words need to be translated.  So the fewer words, the more universal your message is.  Learn from the success of big brands like Apple and Google who take a less is more approach.
-  It doesn’t have to be a .com — You can be successful with a .us, .tv, etc. For example, Delicio.us.
- Groupon is successful in large part because their name rocks. “Group + coupon.” Brilliant. Memorable. Unique. Short. Tells you what it is.
- Get your name first before you spend time and money branding it. Changing your name later is very costly and it means you are undoing all the work you did on public relations, marketing and social media outreach.
- VCs look at your brand and name as a big reason to invest. A great logo, web design, business card, brand and name are almost as important as the product or technology behind the brand.
- Think about web branding when you name your products — and your kids, too. I’m grateful that my mother, very ahead of her time, gave me a name that is so unique that I go to the top of Google. Check that name out in Facebook, Twitter and Google and make sure it’s available. (The reverse applies if you want to protect your privacy — then John Doe is the way to go.)
- Consider adding a unique middle name to your name that describes what you do so you stand out. (ie: David “Avocado” Wolfe is a speaker in the health food field.)
This advice applies to any personal or corporate brand — a musician, band, artist, writer, book title or film. Choose your name carefully and snap up the URL as soon as you can, even if you end up sitting on it for years before you get your project started.
For more information about naming, visit Name Wire a blog about naming.

2 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, Facebook, personal branding, privacy, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, website

February 9, 2011

7 lazy ways to shamelessly promote your blog and social media posts to get more traffic

By Giselle Bisson

Put your social media on autopilot - reach thousands of influencers, worldwide while you're still asleep or drinking your first cup of coffee.

 

1. Use “Share This” widgets to shamelessly self promote.

Whether you’re using WordPress or any other blogging or web development tool, you can use the “Share This” widget on your website to quickly promote your posts .  Just install the widget on your site and right after you file your post share it shamelessly! Take an hour and share your story with every possible site out there–especially Digg and StumbleUpon. The more you share, the more links you are generating back to your site — and the more traffic you’ll get.

2. Use the “Publicize This” feature in Wordpress.

Yesterday WordPress announced some improvements to make their Publicize This feature more friendly.  Follow the instructions and watch your traffic soar.

3. Time your posts strategically.

In the world of old school journalism and PR, we have learned to strategically project which times and days will generate the most pick up for a news announcement. Tuesday at 8 am EST is when I’ve found press releases get the most pickup.

Why? Because on Monday at 8 am, everyone’s still groggy and drinking coffee (or they’re rolling in late to the office, or sitting in meetings.)

Tuesday is when business gets rolling. And it’s the day when publications traditionally have their story meetings.

Wednesday is the day the weeklies traditionally file their stories.

Thursday is still ok, but your story might get forgotten by the following Monday when reporters are writing again.

To bury bad news, you use reverse psychology. To bury bad news, announce on Friday afternoon, or right before a holiday weekend when everyone’s jetting out of town early. (This is the day for announcing the departure of a CEO or dismal profits that you don’t want to influence the market with.)

Well, I’ve discovered the same theory works with blogging, Tweeting and Facebook:

Tuesday at 9 am EST is the perfect time for a Tweet or post you want to get noticed because:

- It’s 9 am on the East Coast and everyone’s drinking coffee and checking their email, Twitter and Facebook.

- It’s 12 noon on the West Coast and everyone’s checking their social media profiles while on lunch break.

- It’s 6 pm in London, and everyone’s finished their work day and are checking their PCs.

There are lots of tools that help you write your Twitter posts in advance and time them. WordPress also let’s you schedule a post in advance so it blasts out just at the right time.  Marketing consultant Gary McCaffree has this great chart that helps you predict the “sweet spot” for a Tweet — he says the best time is between 9 am and 3 pm.

4. Have everything connected so your WordPress updates your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, automatically.

This is so easy and so potent. (And you can even rig it so that it’s on autopilot while you’re still asleep — tricking your clients and colleagues into thinking you are a hard working early riser!)

- Set up the Wordbook plug in to post your WordPress to your Facebook wall.

- Now set up the WordPress to Twitter plug in so that your WordPress post automatically goes out to your Twitter subscribers.

- And use the Twitter to Linked in widget to set things up so your Tweet automatically updates your LinkedIn status.

Wow! You just got out the word to thousands of professional connections while you were still asleep!

5. Use a press release to dramatically boost your story’s pick up.

There are hundreds of free press release sites that will help you blast out your story to the planet, or you can use a professional press release wire service for a fee.  You can time your news in advance to go out at a strategic time, and you can load up your press release with key words that will make it stand out in the search engines. Plus, if you use a paid newswire, your news will automatically go out into Yahoo News and Google News where it’s picked up like an AP or Reuter’s newswire story.

With one well written article or news release, I have consistently generated from 50,000 to 100,000 links back to a client’s website. (That’s not a typo.)  And your traffic will only increase as spiders and bots pick up your news, reprint it on RSS feeds and blogs throughout the web, and yes, generate more links back to your blog which in turn permanently increase traffic and search rank.

But the key word here is “well written.” You can’t get this kind of pick up for self serving fluff — your content has to be genuinely newsworthy, interesting, engaging, funny, controversial, keyword-rich or relevant. If you’re not a wordsmith, hire a professional.  Ultimately it’s a juicy headline and great content that gets noticed, reprinted, passed along virally and linked to.

6. Time your email newsletter to go out at the same time.

Start a news virus! Put your blog post in your email newsletter and time it to go out simultaneously to your customers, internal company employees, investors, partners, influencers and your press/blogger list.  With everyone hearing about your news announcement at the same time, it has more psychic impact and feels more important.  Also it’s courteous to give the news to your most valued contacts just as it goes out to the blogosphere.

7. Spin it and send it out again.

Tweet your story several times in one day or week by simply spinning your Tweet slightly and changing the headline to focus on a different aspect of the story. For example, my headline here is: “7 lazy ways to shamelessly promote your blog posts.” My next headline could be: “7 lazy ways to get more traffic on your website,” and then “7 shamelessly lazy ways to get more Twitter traffic,” and then, “Get more web traffic while you’re still asleep,” and so on… and yes, you can even set them up in advance so they go out on autopilot.

Well, (gloat, gloat) just wanted to let you know that this post went out to thousands of friends and influencers, all over the planet, boosted my search rank and increased my credibility while I was lounging around doing my morning yoga and drinking my first cup of coffee.

That’s why I love social media!

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, citizen journalism, Digg, Facebook, flacks, newsletter, PR Newswire, press release, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, viral, website, Wordpress

February 1, 2011

#Egypt: The First Twitter Revolution

By Giselle Bisson

In the 1980s, the Fall of the Berlin wall was attributed to television.

In the 1990s, fax machines enabled the protests in Tianamen Square.

But today, in Egypt, it’s a Twitter revolution.

Internet social networking services like Twitter and Facebook have been the revolutionary tools of communications for protesters in Egypt.

According to  Al Jezzera, as soon as Twitter, Facebook and Internet access was disrupted, Egyptian protesters resorted to low tech work arounds to get out the word, like fax machines, dial up modems and HAM radios.  Clever protesters have been dictating their 140-character messages over landline telephones to friends outside Egypt who then transcribe them immediately on Twitter and send them out, (and back again) creating a landline to mobile device to landline “virtual Internet” relay that has been quickly keeping Egyptians informed.

Today, according to Reuters, Google Inc (GOOG.O) launched a special service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialing a phone number and leaving a voicemail, as Internet access continues to be cut off in the country during revolutionary anti-government protests.

The service, which Google said was developed with engineers from Twitter, allows people to dial a telephone number and leave a voicemail. The voicemail is automatically translated into a message that is sent on Twitter using the identifying tag #egypt.

Though Egypt blocked Twitter following the protests that erupted on January 25th, tweets about Egypt have surged in the days leading up to and after the start of the revolution that has rocked the world.

According to Sysomos, the number of tweets that contained the words “Egypt,” “Yemen,” or “Tunisia” increased more than tenfold after January 23rd: there were 122,319 tweets between January 16 and 23 containing these terms, and 1.3 million tweets between January 24 and January 30.

According to today’s SF Gate, in a blog co-written by Twitter founder Biz Stone on Twitter’s website, Twitter said that Egypt has to restore the tweets to the country, to allow the freedom of information to flow.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in blog, citizen journalism, Facebook, renegade marketing, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, viral video

December 21, 2010

8 free (or cheap) ways to give your web branding a new look for the New Year

By Giselle Bisson

Start the new year with a fresh new look for your personal brand.

This down time between Christmas and the first week of the New Year is a perfect opportunity to give your personal branding a lift and start the New Year with a fresh image.

Here are eight ways you can use free templates and other inexpensive tools available on the web to give your business or personal brand a lift.

1. Reinvent your name for the new year.

Is your business name unique–or is it lost in the crowd? Consider finding a new name for your business and a unique URL — an identifier that people type into the browser to find your website. Do a little research on  Go Daddy or directly from WordPress, and see if your business name (or your personal name, or the name of your book) is available. If your name is generic, hard to remember or hard to spell, change it today before you start your branding campaign.

 

Check for copyright availability too before you buy your URL. If your business name is no longer available in Facebook, Twitter or Go Daddy, consider modifying or changing it today to something unique before you move on to step 2.
If you aren’t the first whatever that shows up in Google, you’ll need to pay dearly for that in advertising. Names are free. Ads are expensive. Save money by choosing a unique name before you start your web marketing campaign.

2. Start a blog with a free WordPress theme.

Do you have a blog yet? Or do you have an old website that desperately needs an update? A blog is the hub and the center of the wheel of your integrated web marketing strategy, so start with it first.

I recommend a blog, not a Website, because blogs are filled with words, and Google uses words to search for you. In short, blogs, which are filled with Tags and Categories and Words are instantly Search Engine Optimized.

Moving from an old static website to a new WordPress blog (or adding a blog as a link on your old static site) will generate an instant surge in traffic and customers in the New Year.

With one click and you can move your old, outdated WordPress site into a new theme and try it out.  Just click “theme options” in your Dashboard to try on a new look — or spend a little to get your site hosted and you’ll be able to choose from thousands of free templates for your site.
Choose a template that offers a “custom-background” and “custom-header” and custom colors, such as this Elegant Grunge template I used for Visibility Shift.
Your background is important and spend enough time to really find one that strikes you. I like to start with a clean, white, simple zen-like template as a blank canvas and add bling from there:
  • Top 5 WordPress Simple White Themes: http://www.techcats.net/top-5-free-simple-white-wordpress-themes.html
  • 10 super clean and minimal themes: http://www.cssreflex.com/2010/10/10-super-clean-and-minimal-free-wordpress-themes.html
  • 40 stylish, minimal, clean themes: http://speckyboy.com/2009/04/20/40-stylish-minimal-and-clean-free-wordpress-themes/
  • 20 beautiful minimalist themes: http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/20-beautiful-minimalist-wordpress-themes/
3. Add a new free custom  background to your theme.

You can find a free wallpaper online to use as your background, or buy stock art or better yet, use your own photo that you have rights to.  There are thousands of free backgrounds available, here’s just one site to check out:
  • Free wallpapers: http://techmagazine.ws/free-textures-background-images/
4. Create a new custom banner for your page:

Some WordPress sites enable you to drop in a photo, crop it and add text to create a custom banner or header. I used a photo by my brother in law, Adrian Fernandez, (of a galaxy) for this blog, Visibility Shift. Prior to that, I used a free image of Times Square that matched the wallpaper in my Twitter page.
  • Free Twitter background: http://twitrounds.com/twitter-backgrounds/times-square/
Here is just one of many sites that let you create free banners without needing to know Photoshop:
  • Header Art: http://www.header-art.com/
  • Theme Headers: http://www.themeheaders.com/
You can also find sites that offer cute, free custom backgrounds for Blogger, like this one I used for the blog, Shopping for Love:
  • Background Fairy: http://www.backgroundfairy.com.
5. Add free plug ins or custom fonts to your blog.

If you are hosted, you can use a wealth of free Plug Ins to jazz up your blog. If your site is WordPress hosted, you can use Typekit for two free fonts. (Two is the max you should use anyway for clean design.)
Unique fonts will really make your site stand out. I used two very distinctive Typekit fonts in the Laughing Heart site and the colors of pink, lavender and purple for a playful look that suits this husband-wife spiritual comedy team.
The most important plug in is a Share This button that will encourage readers to virally share your content via email, Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg, etc.
6. Start a free newsletter.

Your newsletter should use a similar color scheme, template, banner, background, photograph and font as the rest of your branding. My branding designer recommends the free My Newsletter Builder for a newsletter. Most of my friends and clients use Constant Contact. A new service, My Emma, is more stylish.
Make sure you add all of your social networking pages into the signature line in your newsletter.
While you’re at it, update your email list and type in or scan the contacts from all those business cards you gathered in 2010. When you build social media pages, you can use that email list to invite customers and contacts to join your pages.
You can manage your email list for free in a free email program like Fastmail or Gmail.
7. Update (or start) your Facebook Fan Page, Twitter page, Linked In profile and Yelp page.

If you don’t have a social media presence yet, the winter break is a great, quiet time to hunker down and do the tedious, time consuming work it takes to get your pages built and invite all of your contacts into them.
Again, use the same photo, name, background wall paper or logo, and the same fonts consistently in all of your web and social media pages.
8. Send out a New Year’s holiday greeting with your e-newsletter to announce your new look.
There are tons of free New Year’s wallpapers out there that you can use to spruce up your newsletter, or better yet, commission a portrait of your family, work group or business, or a collection of photos that sum up the highlights of 2010.  Use your newsletter to announce your new website and Social Media pages to your friends, family, business contacts and customers and start the New Year with a fresh look for 2011.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, Facebook, newsletter, personal branding, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, template, Twitter, viral, website, Wordpress

December 19, 2010

Facebook is a global network you can’t afford to ignore.

By Giselle Bisson

This map of Facebook friendships looks not surprisingly like a map of the Earth as seen from space at night.

Are you utilizing this vast network of more than 1/3 of the most wired, affluent and educated people on the planet to promote your business, consulting practice, art form or cause? You should be.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/data_visualisation_1?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Far%2Ffacebookfriends.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in blog, Facebook, many to many, public relations, renegade marketing, shameless self promotion, social media, viral

November 9, 2010

Is Rockmelt just a browser for Facebook freaks? Or will it really rock our world?

By Giselle Bisson

Children, gather around the electric campfire. You might not believe this, but I remember a world without web browsers.

We had social networks back then. One of them was called The Well (for Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), but you needed to know cryptic Unix shell commands to communicate on it.

The web, in its infancy, was just characters and commands, words and numbers. No photos of Paris Hilton, no Britney Spears sex videos.

Then along came Mosaic.

I was there, back in 1992 or so, one of the first times Mosaic was shown publicly. It wasn’t a big press conference. We were crouched around a workstation monitor, and the guy demoing it talked about it in lofty, spiritual terms. I remember distinctly that he said Mosaic was something that was going to unify the planet and usher in a new era of understanding. It would give us a unified, global consciousness. Looking back, as wacked out as that statement might have seemed at the time, he was right.

Clustered there that day were a few people, many of whom are now legends in the computer industry. We were in a underground club at 9th and Folsom Street in San Francisco’s then pretty seedy SOMA nightclub district. This bar was in its “Cyber Cafe” phase, and it had bathroom walls papered with real computer circuit boards.

Everyone was wearing a lot of black leather, Cyndi Lauper-ish dyed hair and spiked dog collars and we were all kind of artsy and broke. Craigslist was a event list emailed to about 150 people.  The dot com boom hadn’t started yet, and the tech world was about geeks, long hair and iconoclasts — not venture capitalists, MBAs and big money.

If you saw a picture of it today you’d laugh at how primitive it is compared to today’s web. But Mosaic was different. So different that it was kind of hard to grasp conceptually. It was visual. It had graphics. It had colors and windows.

When I first saw Mosaic I instantly knew I was witnessing history. A chill ran up my spine. This was something that would totally change the world — a massive leap beyond anything that existed before it.

Back then, everyone had a different email account, and belonged to a different network. (Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve, MCI Mail.) There wasn’t anything that connected these networks so it was really difficult to communicate unless you belonged to several.

Mosaic hijacked the World Wide Web from the hands of scientists, researchers and geeks and made it accessible to ordinary people. It unified all of those separate networks into a single space, a browser. And it was visual.

It solved a real problem. It enabled people to do something they couldn’t even imagine before it existed. It rocked my world.

So back to the future, Rockmelt.

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When I visited the new site for RockMelt and watched the hype-filled intro video today, it did not exactly have this effect on me. RockMelt is cool. It has great marketing. They kept it simple. It is defintely already making waves. But is it a paradigm shift like Mosaic and Netscape Navigator? WIll it change the way millions of people work, interact and live?

I’m not sure.

Billed as a “social browser,” Rockmelt, which is created by some of the same folks who worked on Mozaic 16 years ago, (and later, the Netscape browser), and is funded by Netscape founder Marc Andressen, mixes the social world of Twitter and Facebook with the rest of the web. It is based on the fundamental principle that the Web today is not just about browsing and finding, it’s about sharing.

There’s a row of photos along the left (your friends), and a row of Social Network icons along the right. (Your networks.) Centered between the personal network and the public networks, lies the rest of the web, making it easy to navigate back and forth between your friends, your networks and the news and information you’re searching for, without, one hopes, having to constantly flip back and forth between tabs and log in and log out of different accounts.

Rockmelt is essentially about sharing.

If Rockmelt can do what social network integration tools like HootSuite are supposed to do, but in a more elegant way, unifying all of your social networks and friends into a single dashboard, it will definitely attract the Social Media Geeks and Freaks (like me) and the Social Web Professionals.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is adoption — will people use it? Does it enable us to do something we’ve never done before?

Will my Mom use it?

Or will it go the way of Flock, Cruz, Fizzik and (probably, just because the name sucks) Blekko?

You can sign up for a Rockmelt beta program and decide for yourself. Let me know what you think.

Leave a comment | posted in blog, Facebook, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, Wordpress

November 8, 2010

Executive social media jobs exploding. (It’s not just for ninjas, gurus and interns anymore.)

By Giselle Bisson
Look how fat I am on your airline.

Commedian Kevin Smith posted this Twit Pic with the caption: "Look how fat I am on your airline," after Southwest bumped him off a flight for being too fat.

2010 was the year of the uber-embarrassing social media blunder:

  • Southwest Airlines threw celebrity Kevin Smith off a plane for being too fat to fly in one seat. Smith’s Tweets about the incident were not only widely read and hilarious, but a PR nightmare for the airline.
  • The Gap changed their logo and the blogosphere errupted by ridiculing it with the “Crap” logo and the “Gag” logo.

In the wake of so many embarrassing social media disasters, smart businesses are finally starting to take social media seriously. This week, social media hit a new Tipping Point and the Fortune 500 started creating new jobs and investing in seasoned professionals.

Today I did a search in one of the employment databases and found an astonishing 3,193 new jobs created in the US in the last few days for social media professionals! But more amazing, most of these jobs are senior level, VP, Director or Manager positions. This is a dramatic shift from even a few months ago.

Here are just a few of the major brands that are advertising for new social media posts:

Sony, Corning, American Express, Coca Cola, Ingram Micro, Intl, Nike, Accenture, EHarmony, Red Cross, Forever 21, Vocus, View Sonic, ToysR US, IBM, BBC News, Lowe’s, DSW, Chrysler, L’Oreal, Chase, COX, Este Lauder, Yahoo, Vonage, MGM, Citrix, GNC, Kellogg, Equinox Fitness, Bloomberg, HP, Ann Taylor, Starwood Hotels, Omnicom Group, CitiGroup, Lily Pulitzer…

Many web-based businesses and tech start-ups are also searching for social talent: Amazon.com, Tiny Prints, Elance, Moxie, Diapers.com, Yahoo, Tripadvisor, EHarmony, Shopzilla, Vocus.

But not a single ad looking for a social media “guru” or “ninja.”


5 comments | posted in blog, damage control, Facebook, many to many, press release, public relations, search engine optimization, seo, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, viral video, website, you tube

November 3, 2010

Seven lame, business-killing excuses for not having a social media presence.

By Giselle Bisson

1. You’re too busy.

I don’t think social media is optional anymore — a professional presence in social media is now a marketing necessity, like a business card or a website. You can’t afford not to have a social media presence. You’ll look like a Luddite, like you’re out of step, like you’re stuck in the Eighties — when people actually got their news from a newspaper, bought things from ads and were influenced by television.

For most businesses and professions, social media is important. (It’s not as useful for big brands and large corporations, unless the communication is coming from a charismatic CEO or spokesperson.) Make an investment in social media, plan your strategy first, do it right, and you’ll be paid back ten-fold.

Updating your profile and sending out Twitter updates can become part of your regular routine — like brushing your teeth, answering email and checking your voice mail.

Using free tools, you can interlink all of your social profiles — so that your Twitter automatically updates Facebook, your blog and LinkedIn. You can update everything simultaneously from your mobile phone in a few minutes a day.

2. You don’t “get” this social media thing.

When you tell stories in public, not only do they have to be true (fact checked, verified, libel-free and legal), accurate, spell-checked and well written, but your story needs to be interesting, engaging and continually evolving. If you’re not naturally good at that, or you don’t have time, you’ll want to hire professional help.

Ultimately, you’ll need to be engaged on a daily basis. Celebrities, consultants, musicians, workshop leaders, public speakers and CEOs who “get” social media make it a priority and are personally involved. You can also outsource social updating to a pro. But make sure they take time to truly know and understands your business, know how to tell an engaging story, have a “voice” and “get” the culture, ethics and rules of the community you’re trying to reach.

3. You can’t afford it.

Everything you need is free. If you hire a consultant, you can get a lot of value from a few hours of his/her time setting your site up and coaching you on the unwritten secrets, tips and tricks of really using Social Media brilliantly.

4. You don’t need it.

Just like you “didn’t need” a website back in 2000. Everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, killed brick and mortar businesses, got all the cool urls and are now worth millions. Are you going to miss out on this land grab too?

500 million people worldwide are utilizing Facebook to create their personal brand. Many events are solely promoted on Facebook. You are really late to the program and totally out of the loop and out of touch if you have a stagnant, unupdated profile or none at all.  These days a lot of people think you don’t exist anymore if you’re not in the social sphere because they aren’t even using email anymore and use Facebook or LinkedIn as their main way of communicating with colleagues, or Twitter as their main way to announce breaking news.

5. You’re doing fine with Google adwords.

Oh yeah? Why are you buying search results that will disappear as soon as you stop paying — when you could be using social sites and a blog to build a search ranking that will last forever. Also, you’re totally missing out on a highly targeted market if you’re not also advertising on Facebook.

6. You already hired an SEO guy.

In my opinion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is dead in 2010. It was important in the age of static HTML websites in the 90s.

Why? Because search engines can only search text! The most important thing you can do is generate tons of text and mentions of your URL that will drive people back to your website.  More about this tomorrow.

7. It’s not necessary.

If you are not on social media, your business reputation is at risk! Ignore social media at your peril–because people are probably talking about you, your competitors and your brand. They’re building relationships without you. They’re inviting people to cool events that you’re not learning about.  If you’re not on social media by now, it’s as if you don’t exist.

Bad PR used to be quickly forgotten when the newspaper was tossed in the trash. Now it lasts forever in Cyberspace. Bad customer reviews can quickly destroy a new product launch, a new event or a beta program.  Bad word of mouth on social networks will severely damage your personal reputation.

Negative reviews on Yelp can kill a restaurant in a few days. Don’t worry, you can now pay Yelp a monthly fee (aka bribe) to remove bad reviews. Better off to not get them in the first place.

You need to be prepared to brand yourself and position yourself wisely. And you need to pay attention to what your peers, competitors and partners are saying in the social realm.

If your business is large, you’ll also need to track the coverage and monitor feedback so you can respond to customers immediately. It’s all quickly becoming as complex as a traditional, mainstream media PR program.

Whatever you call it — Social Media, Emerging Media, New Media — it’s all just a conversation.

But it’s a conversation you can’t avoid anymore.  Ignore it at your peril or it will happen without you.  It’s time to lead the conversation.

83 comments | posted in blog, damage control, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, PR Newswire, press release, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, viral, viral video, website, Wordpress

September 28, 2010

Holacracy and Facebook — are we creating a global brain?

By Giselle Bisson

A map of the Internet

For three weeks this summer, I was totally off the grid and more or less out of touch while immersed in a permaculture workshop near Mt. Shasta. Permaculture, which literally means “permanent agriculture”, is a systems design theory that can be applied to sustainable agriculture, architecture and community design.

While it started 40 years ago in Australia, permaculture is just now starting to hit a “tipping point” and emerge into mainstream media consciouness. (As it did recently when an actress Ellen Page talked about her permaculture workshop on the Ellen De Generes show.)

Our workshop, produced by Living Mandala, focused on teaching the fundamentals of permaculture in the context of training future leaders of intergenerational ecovillages and intentional communities, so we learned about new systems of organizational management.

As we sat in a beautiful outdoor classroom in the forest, organizational management coach and “evolutionary strategist” Shiloh Boss gave us an intriguing presentation on a new method of leadership called Holocracy. The holacracy concept has evolved out of a startup software company in Philadelphia, Tierney Software.

There are now 100 trained practitioners in Holacracy. “It is an open science, but it is also an open technology available to anyone,” says Boss.

“Meshworks are various organizations or communities that can tackle issues that are insurmountable, like climate change,” she says. “The communities in a sense become an “autonomous body” aligned to a larger purpose.”

It’s like a mushoom mycelium — an organizational meshwork that is intricately interconnected. (By the way, we learned earlier this week from a mycologist that the Mycelium of a mushroom, when mapped out, looks exactly like a map of the Internet.)

Holacracy is hybridized in other meshworks and hierarchies, creating funcational complimentaries that result in stable structures. They are localized, as well as have a strategy of interweaving.  Although meshworks result from the action of many individual and collective decision makers, they take on a life of their own.  They add themselves to individual structures operating at different scales.

Aside from the mesh of communications webs that make up a mushroom mycellium beneath the earth, one clear example of a “meshwork” is social networks like Facebook. This web makes it possible for news to travel like a “virus.”

And there is a spiritual, almost cosmic or psychic interconnectedness to Holacratic structures. Says Boss, “There is actually a larger web of the new world and the new culture, serving the greater world and a greater purpose.”

For example, within the larger network of Facebook are autonomous wholes — generally groups or organizations of 100 to 5,000 people.

In a Holacracy, a coherency of a larger whole can align and govern so that within your circle you self govern, and it’s nested into a larger whole that is always taking in greater information and aligning itself.

There is a larger movement of interconnected, interlinked and overlapping communities,  that can respond and react to the larger issues of the world in a coherent manner.

All interesting to think about, as we begin to form more of a unified and rapid communications “mycellium” amongst ourselves by using mobile devices, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of instantaneous communication forming a “global brain.”

3 comments | posted in blog, Facebook, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, website

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