A New Marketing Commentator

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you already know about the  ”10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media” series of posts I started writing on January 13 of this year and recently concluded on April 5. But what you wouldn’t know is how much I’ve been looking forward to stringing these posts together into one exhaustive guide on how to communicate effectively via the blogosphere, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other such Internet-based platforms.  

In this 2,700-word series, I took a long view of social media, focusing on the principles that people in this space need to keep in mind, not necessarily the day-to-day tactics. After all, despite the widespread adoption of social media, it’s still very misunderstood. As I wrote in the introduction to this series…

…social media isn’t rocket science. But it’s definitely a BIG departure for those who have been dependent on traditional marketing, advertising, PR and communications methods up until now.

So if you’d like to read the entire series — “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media” —  in one fell swoop, click here. Or simply click on the fifth tab over (the next to last one to the right) at the top of this blog. That’s where I’ve archived this entire series. For your convenience, I’ve also listed each post in this series below with its corresponding link.

By the way, I’m always interested in hearing from you, so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any feedback for me – anytime. Thanks.

To read the entire “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media” series, click here.

To read each post in this series, one at a time, follow the links below…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six
Leverage a number of channels.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Seven
Overcome the social media “dip.”
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Eight
Educate others more than you promote yourself.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Nine
Measure the results of your activities.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Ten
Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube Social Media

This “blog post on video” was recorded on May 1, 2010. It’s the video version of a post I wrote and published on February 23, 2010 called “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six,” which you can read in its entirety here.

If you can’t see the video on this page, you can check it out on my YouTube channel by clicking here.

Bob Cargill is a copywriter, creative director and social media marketer who helps brands to strategize, develop and implement successful new marketing programs. He is always interested in new speaking, consulting and freelancing opportunities.

To contact Bob, click here.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube Social Media

It’s that time of year again. The New England Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference is just around the corner — May 12 and 13 at the LaCava Center at Bentley College in Waltham, MA. And just like year, I’m happy to have the opportunity to speak not just once, but twice on social media, this time around on “Understanding Social Media, from Theory to Tactics” (9:00 AM-3:30 PM, May 12) and “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media” (8:30 AM-9:45 AM, May 13).

“Understanding Social Media, from Theory to Tactics”
In my all-day workshop on May 12, I’ll show participants how to attract attention, pique curiosity, stimulate engagement and develop new business opportunities via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the blogosphere. From the mechanics to the principles to the so-called three A’s  — ability, affability and availability — of social media (to learn more about the three A’s, see my Blog Post on Video: The Three A’s of Social Media Branding), you’ll learn the steps you need to take to position yourself as an opinion leader and authority, someone who’s worthy of your audience’s trust, support and patronage. I’ll cover…

– How to use Twitter to get referrals, leads and potential new customers
– What — and when — your fans really want to hear from you on Facebook
– Why every organization ought to have its own YouTube channel
– Where LinkedIn fits in to your brand’s social media program
– How to publish a blog that gets rave reviews
– And much more

“10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media”
The next day, May 13, I’ll be taking the 2,700-word blog post series — “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media” — I wrote and published recently right here on A New Marketing Commentator and turning it into a 75-minute presentation. Among other things, I’ll talk about…

– When it’s the right time to commit serious resources to social media
– Why it’s so important in this day and age for marketers to be as transparent, authentic and as extemporaneous as possible
– How an endless stream of your own quality content will separate you from the competition
– Where to find the best audience for your products and services on today’s social web
– What specific steps you need to take to position yourself as a thought leader, community builder and brand to be admired
– And much more

Between these two presentations, I’m looking forward to sharing everything I know about this transformative means of online communications. So if you’re in interested in learning more about social media, please consider attending my presentations. I’d be delighted — and honored — to see you there.

To learn more about the New England Direct Marketing Association’s upcoming annual conference, click here.

Bob Cargill is a copywriter, creative director and social media marketer who helps brands to strategize, develop and implement successful new marketing programs. He is always interested in new speaking, consulting and freelancing opportunities. To contact Bob, click here.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Direct Marketing, Facebook, Fundraising, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube

My dad joined me recently at one of the places — Upper Union Street in Franklin, Massachusetts, the town in which I grew up — where he taught me, my brother and sister to run more than four decades ago. Given that I’ll be running the Boston Marathon once again this year, I thought it would be a great time to capture the memory and share the story…

How My Dad Taught Me to Run

When I was just a boy, my dad used to take me and my older brother and sister to a quiet, rolling, long stretch of road – less travelled, free of traffic and on the outskirts of town – where he would time each of us running for about a quarter of a mile or so, an exceptionally long distance for me at that tender, young age.

But I liked it. I liked that indoctrination to such a challenging sport, that introduction to the concept of pounding the pavement one small step at a time, running as fast as I could go for as long as I could last. I liked it enough to keep at it for years, to keep pushing my body to its furthermost limits until that one fateful day that it would no longer cooperate, until my tired, old legs would be forced to succumb to the wear and the tear, the ache and the pain.

Fortunately, that day hasn’t arrived. I haven’t reached the finish line of my running career yet. Decades have passed since those first family fun runs, but I’m happy to say that I’m still going the distance. I’m still running 5Ks and 10Ks, mountains and marathons. I’m still running for time.

Yes, ever since a father taught his children how to run like the wind, the youngest one of them all has logged thousands of miles and is still going strong. In fact, in just seven days from now, I’ll be running my seventh Boston Marathon for charity, this time around for Christopher’s Haven, a home away from home for children being treated for cancer at MassGeneral Hospital for Children.

So please help me help young cancer patients and their families. Please go to http://www.firstgiving.com/bobcargill and give as much as you can afford. I’ll appreciate it. But the kids and families who are staying at Christopher’s Haven will appreciate it even more. It’s on their behalf that I’m running the Boston Marathon on April 19, 2010. And it’s on their behalf that I thank you for your support – and, yes, my dad for teaching me to run such a long time ago.

Thanks, Dad!

Bob Cargill Boston Marathon, Fundraising

10. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Your success in social media may be dependent in large measure on what you have to share with others, but how you come across – your online persona – is also very important.    

Whether you’re on Facebook or YouTube, tweeting or blogging, you need to be as affable as you are knowledgeable, as charismatic as you are smart. You need to lighten up.

Sure, many of the most effective social media practitioners are opinionated and authoritative, natural born leaders at the top of their fields. But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that they’re also easygoing and deferential, not afraid to share some of their personal lives with their professional peers. They’re approachable and responsive, people who are comfortable having impromptu, informal conversations with a diverse range of constituents.

As I said before (Blog Post on Video: The Three A’s of Social Media Branding)…

Skills alone will only get you so far in social media. You need to humanize your brand identity. Those who are most popular in social media are those who have the best bedside manners, the most engaging personalities.  They are amiable and congenial, generous and kind, people who are as good at listening as they are teaching, as humble and humorous as they are confident in their abilities.

Yes, when all is said and done, social media won’t work very well for the aloof or the arrogant, those who play their hands close to the vest and can’t crack a smile. Social media works best for those who take their work, not themselves, seriously.

This is the tenth in a 10-post series on how to succeed in social media. I’ll be publishing the entire series as one long post and/or possibly even an eBook soon. If you have any feedback on either this post or the entire series, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks.

Previous Posts in This Series…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six
Leverage a number of channels.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Seven
Overcome the social media “dip.”
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Eight
Educate others more than you promote yourself.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Nine
Measure the results of your activities.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube

9. Measure the results of your activities.

If you’re serious about using social media, not just in it for fun, then you need to measure the results of your online activities so you know where you stand.

If you publish a blog, you can use such tools as Technorati to see how it compares to others in your industry or Google Analytics to find out which posts people are reading, where they’re coming from and how long they’re staying on your site.

But that’s not all you want to analyze. You also want to look at how many readers are subscribing to your blog, how many comments you’re receiving, how many other blogs are linking back to yours and how often it’s turning up in search engine results.

And that’s just for starters. Ideally, a blog should lead to a multitude of new business opportunities – including speaking engagements, PR, WOM, leads and sales – all of which you want to monitor, qualify and quantify. 

On Twitter, of course, it’s great to have a lot of followers, but how many of them are retweeting you or actually engaging with you? Are you being included on a lot of lists? Are you using bit.ly or another URL shortening tool to track the number of people who actually click through your links? Have others featured you in their Follow Friday tweets?

Among the many tools you can use to assess your performance on Twitter are Twitter Grader, TweetLevel, TweetStats, TwitGraph and TweetMeme. 

Facebook, of course, provides some interesting demographic information to page owners about their fans, not to mention data such as number of “likes,” “wall posts,” “comments” and “visits.” You also want to observe – and respond to – what fans write on your page; that’s an obvious way to manage and monitor your brand’s reputation.

It’s easy to count your connections – or members of any groups you manage – on LinkedIn as well as how many times they interact with you.

And on YouTube, you can track how many times your videos have been viewed, how many subscribers you have to your channel, friends, ratings, comments and more. 

And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s an infinite number of metrics you can monitor in social media, both quantitative and qualitative, all of which you should look at carefully if you want to succeed. And there are many good social media monitoring tools — such as Radian6, Trackur, Cision and Scout Labs just to name four — you can use to do the job for you.

This is the ninth in a 10-post series on how to succeed in social media. I’ll soon be publishing the last post in this series here on my blog, A New Marketing Commentator. Please stay tuned. And if you have any feedback on this series for me, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks.

Previous Posts in This Series…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six
Leverage a number of channels.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Seven
Overcome the social media “dip.”
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Eight
Educate others more than you promote yourself.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube

This “blog post on video” was recorded on March 20, 2010 in my own back yard in Sudbury, MA. It’s the video version of a post I wrote and published on January 27, 2010 called “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three,” which you can read in its entirety here.

If you can’t see the video on this page, you can check it out on my YouTube channel by clicking here.

Bob Cargill is a copywriter, creative director and social media marketer who helps brands to strategize, develop and implement successful new marketing programs. He is always interested in new speaking, consulting and freelancing opportunities.

To contact Bob, click here.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube

8. Educate others more than you promote yourself.

A big mistake many organizations make is to use social media the way they use traditional marketing vehicles such as direct mail, email, print and broadcast. Instead of listening to their constituents, they’re tooting their own horns and focusing on ROI. They’re doing everything they can to force one-way, top-down, interruptive marketing messages into channels that were built for permission-based dialogue that doesn’t necessarily conform to a preconceived agenda.

What they’re doing is like trying to place a square peg into a round hole. Their efforts are futile.

But that’s not to say you can’t generate leads and sales in social media. In fact, if you conduct yourself appropriately in these spaces and places, chances are your efforts will result in a multitude of new business opportunities.

Use the blogosphere, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other such properties to share not only your knowledge and expertise, but also a little about who you are as a person and a lot about the industry in which you earn your livelihood.

Create as much valuable content as possible and then give it away for free.

Become a publishing machine, a brand that’s much more informative, supportive and educational than promotional.

Put the good word out about your products and services, but do so because you want to help others, not because you’re in it for a buck.

In social media, the more you open up to others as a fellow human being, the more they’ll get to know you as someone they can confide in, look up to and trust. The more they’ll want to do business with you and your organization.

This is the eighth in a 10-post series on how to succeed in social media. Over the course of the next month or so, I’ll publish the remaining two posts in the series here on my blog, A New Marketing Commentator. Please stay tuned. And if you have any feedback on this series for me, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks.

Previous Posts in This Series…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six
Leverage a number of channels.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Seven
Overcome the social media “dip.”

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube

7. Overcome the social media “dip.”

A common mistake made by many business folks is to think that social media will be an instant cure for what ails their traditional marketing activities. And while in many cases it can and will have an overwhelmingly positive effect on an organization’s ability to connect with its constituency, it’s not a panacea for an inferior product, poor PR, inept communications or a lackluster brand.

The truth is that it’s a long and winding road to social media success. And as anyone who’s been blogging, tweeting and the like for a long time knows, it’s often an uphill climb, too.

But if you can tough it out – listening, creating, engaging and opening up to others – for an indefinite period of time, making sure that social media is part and parcel of everything you do in business, not a silo, then the odds are pretty good that you’ll be a hit on the grid.

As I wrote in a previous blog post (The Importance of Getting Past the Social Media “Dip”)…

If you ask me, the key to being successful with social media is patience, perseverance and pushing past the so-called “Dip,” a difficult stretch of time (invariably the beginning) when the going can be tough and the rewards may appear few.
 
The Dip, of course, is the title of one of Seth Godin’s many best-selling books. On the front flap of the book, the “Dip” is referred to as “a temporary setback that you will overcome if you keep pushing.”

But the definition of the “Dip” I like best is written on page 17 of the book, where Seth describes it as “the long slog between starting and mastery.” My experience tells me that that’s just the juncture, too, where almost everyone involved in social media gets caught up in the “Dip,” where people – and brands – have to decide for themselves whether their seemingly Herculean efforts are worth it.

This is the seventh in a 10-post series on how to succeed in social media. Over the course of the next couple of months or so, I’ll publish the balance of the series, one post at a time (not necessarily consecutively), here on my blog, A New Marketing Commentator. Please stay tuned. And if you have any feedback on this series for me, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks.

Previous Posts in This Series…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six
Leverage a number of channels.

Bob Cargill Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube