social media — Connected World Media

Cheap Trick Talks New Marketing

March 17, 2010 By David Jacobs

Image via Wikipedia

Cheap Trick is a band that had it’s heyday back in the late 70′s and 80′s, but it has found a way to stay relavant in todays world despite monumental changes in the music business. While other older bands have been very slow to adopt the new digital marketplaces like iTunes, Cheap Trick has gone all in on new media marketing.

In this CNBC video, the band talks about how they dropped their record label and are doing all marketing and distribution themselves these days. They clearly recognize most of their money is made from touring and merchandise, not record sales. “Why do you give some of your music away?” asks the reporter with surprise. “It’s great promotion!” answers Cheap Trick.

An older band like Cheap Trick has virtually no chance for traditional radio play or prime locations at retail. The band knows their best chance to keep doing what they love and keep getting paid is to take full control over their own situation. They have also been very savvy in creating work for movies, video games and even Stephen Colbert’s theme music. Not only do they know how to market to their core audience, but embracing these new venues can open them up to new customers as well.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Filed Under: Blog, Digital Music, Marketing, New Media Tagged With: Cheap Trick, CNBC, iTunes, Music, Music Industry, New Marketing, New Media, Record label, social media

Face Value

November 30, 2009 By David Jacobs

I have been fortunate enough to attend a few really great social media conferences in the past few months and while there I noticed something very interesting. It’s something I had experienced in years past as well. Several people that I came into contact with were familiar with me because of Facebook or Twitter and my profile picture specifically helped to jog that recognition. One person even commented how much he enjoyed my picture on Facebook as it includes my new baby Capella on my shoulders. He said it makes him smile every time he sees it pop up in his Facebook stream.

That’s a kind of brand awareness that you can’t purchase for anything. Traditionally we think of brand awareness as it is associated to a logo like the Nike swoosh or Apple’s Apple with a bite out of it. Logo branding is still a powerful tool and I help many customers crate or revitalize their logos but in this increasingly social world there is also a power in your own face. I guess they don’t call it Facebook for nothing.

Don’t underestimate the value of your face. Think carefully about all those profile photos on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and everywhere else. If you’re into this for building business and brand value, here are some tips to remember:

Make sure your picture is a good one. A clear close up view of your face. Make sure the exposure is good and the pose is comfortable and positive. Something that captures a little of your personality is always great.
Don’t use cartoon characters or other logos. If it is an account that represents the entire company, a company logo would be appropriate for that.
The background should be as clean and clear as possible. You don’t want anything to obscure or take focus away from what’s most important, your face.
Don’t change your picture often. You can change it now and again, especially if you get a better picture to use, but try to remain as consistent as possible.

I would not appear with anyone else in your photo with the exception of your kids. This could even be a debated point, but I chose personally to have Capella in my Facebook profile for a few reasons. My personal Facebook account is a little less business and more personal. My Connected World Media Facebook page uses the company logo. My kids are also a big part of my life and so much of who I am, I don’t mind showing that. That being said, I have recently changed my LinkedIn photo to a photo of just me and my Twitter profile pic is the same one although my Twitter custom background has the Capella and me photo on it. I try to use the same photo across all networks as much as possible, again for consistency sake.

As with most things there are no hard and fast answers. You have to discover what works for you and your company, but I hope I have given you some things to think about. As always if you want help in this or any other social media regard, don’t hesitate to contact me. I would love to work with you on your brand image online.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Social Networks Tagged With: facebook, Marketing, social media, twitter

Chasing Fireflies and Social Media Value

September 15, 2009 By David Jacobs

We are living in a most exciting time. Innovation from the technology sector continues to flourish, even in our hard economic times. It is the great upside of the massive tech bubble that burst in late 2001. From those ashes, new smarter and less expensive technologies were born enabling all manner of new Internet businesses to grow without the large sums of investment required during the bubble years. As a result of this growth in innovation is wide smattering of products and services being released weekly. For those of us who follow this space carefully, it can be exhausting to keep up with. I do it for my customers because I am trying to find the business value for them in all this. But you have to be careful not to be chasing fireflies. There are so many bright shiny objects floating around, it’s easy to be attracted to all of them. I see this daily in the social media sphere. Certain applications are all the rage and then fade away in favor of the next one. The average life of a firefly is 2 months, strangely enough which is about the same lifespan of the average bright shiny social media object.

I try not to spend my time chasing fireflies. I try to zoom in on business value. Could this be of use to any of my customers and if so, how? Because an application is “cool” or is even fun doesn’t mean it has business value. Time is precious and you should be careful not to invest too much time in things that are just not going to make it. Now that’s a tough call to make sometimes. After all, I didn’t think Twitter had any value when I first saw it. But that’s why my ear is always to the ground and my eyes are always open. When I saw Twitter continue to flourish, I jumped back in and went deep with it. I found the value. An open mind the flexibility are critical aspects of surviving in this new chaotic time.

Beware of bright shiny objects. Focus on real business value. Focus on your customers.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology Tagged With: business value, fireflies, social media, trends

Social Media is not a Broadcast Medium

August 6, 2009 By David Jacobs

Martha Stewart recently announced she is giving up on Facebook in favor of Twitter. More bang for the tweet she says. Bill Gates also has stopped using Facebook citing difficulty keeping up with friend requests. I hear this from clients as well. Facebook takes more work than Twitter. There is also more nonsense going on with Facebook apps like Pirate games and thrown snowballs. There is nothing quite like the raw simplicity of Twitter. Also with Twitter, you can gain followers without having to do anything. They follow you by choice and you do not have to follow them back. No management required. I understand all this, but don’t underestimate Facebook.

For one thing, I find that more of my non-geeky so called “normal” friends use Facebook much more and sometimes exclusively over Twitter. If your goal is to reach a less bleeding edge audience, Facebook is really the way to go. Also, it’s a fairly easy to thing to get your Tweets to automatically populate Facebook, so there is really no need to completely abandon it.

As far as the reciprocity of Facebook friends go, that brings me to my second point. I wish I had the problem of having to manage more friend requests than I could handle. But it brings up the larger point that many of these stars aren’t interested in reciprocity. They don’t want to listen or converse, they want to talk. Look at Martha’s Twitter and you will find over a million followers but she only follows 35 people. Her tweets rarely if ever include conversations to other people and when they do it’s mostly to other stars. This is common for most big stars on Twitter. They are using Twitter like another broadcast medium. This, of course, is inherently wrong and against the very spirit of social media. They don’t call it social for nothing. It’s disappointing to see this because these stars have an unbelievable access to their greatest fans. With a million people following you, I’m sure it’s hard to talk to everyone but I see no reason why they cannot at least make an effort and do what they can.

Facebook takes more work than Twiter because it does more, but Twitter takes work to if you’re doing it right. It’s something my clients often don’t want to hear, this stuff takes work. But marketing your business takes work too and this kind of marketing can pay off in a much more powerful and long lasting way for all that effort.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Social Networks Tagged With: facebook, Marketing, Martha Stewart, social media, twitter

Twitter is Like a Ball of Clay – Part 2

July 26, 2009 By David Jacobs

Consider this a followup post to my original Twitter is like a ball of clay post. I saw a couple of videos tonight that gave me some additional ideas to further refine the concept and answer the question, why do many people still disregard Twitter as trivial messaging?

The first video is Barry Diller chairman of IAC. He has barely if at all used Twitter and says it’s not a “natural” advertising platform in addition to disregarding it as trivial. It’s also not natural for people to jump out of perfectly good airplanes, but many do and they get a singular experience that cannot be attained any other way. Nothing is normal or natural about social and new media either. That’s why it’s called disruptive and revolutionary. This new marketing world requires a new way of thinking that Barry Diller cannot grok which is ironic since IAC owns a number of great Internet properties.

The second video is White House press secretary Robert Gibbs mentioning that Twitter is, in fact, blocked from White House computers. He does so very casually and he indicates that, at least for him, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not as egregious as Barry Diller, but still somewhat dismissive.

So why? Why do these prominent people, and many others, view Twitter in this way? I think the answer is that Twitter is like a ball of clay. If you’re not willing to pick it up and try to do something with it, it will just be a ball of clay, which is not terribly useful on the face of it. And that’s the problem. People look at Twitter and say ” ok, it’s a ball of clay, I don’t get it”. If you’re not willing to look beyond the surface. If you’re not willing to pick up the clay and mold it into something useful for yourself, you will never, ever get it. Twitter is not some whiz bang social media, demographic, statistics dashboard from on high. It is not a spoon fed, pre-packaged marketing widget. This is what too many marketers want unfortunately. Twitter and much of the rest of social media is something you have to work with your hands. Yes, like working clay you have to get your hands dirty. If I can push the analogy maybe a little too far, this is a good thing because you get a real tactile feel for and a connection with your art (marketing) like never before.

Twitter is a tricky technology because it’s value runs below the surface. I will admit to not seeing it myself at first. I ignored Twitter for a few months thinking it sounded quite dumb. But I gave it a chance and more importantly I went deep with it. The more people I followed and that followed me the better it got. I was patient and it took time to build up to where I am today. It’s something else common marketers don’t have, patience nor the creative zeal to mold the clay and teach their clients to mold the clay.

And that’s what I do at Connected World Media. I teach my clients how to mold the clay. I teach them how to view Twitter for what it is, unlimited potential and how to tap that potential for their benefit.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, New Media, Social Networks Tagged With: advertising, Barry Diller, IAC, Robert Gibbs, social media, twitter, White House

Honesty is a Social Media Pillar

May 27, 2009 By David Jacobs

There are a few fundamental pillars upon which social media sits; honesty is one of them. No, this isn’t your fathers marketing.

I was reading an interesting article in the New York Times about how companies are starting to add social media specialists to their rolls and how some enterprising individuals are making good use of social media to land these jobs. All good, but two things stood out to me and I wasn’t happy about either. At one point the article talks about David Puner of Dunkin Donuts (@dunkindonuts).

Recently he said he told his tweeps (Twitter followers) he was going to a Bruce Springsteen concert wearing a pink Dunkin’ Donuts cape. So did he? “I didn’t really do that,” he said. “I’m not the type to shoot T-shirts out of a cannon into the crowd.”

It’s not a big thing but it disturbs me. What else has he lied about? David’s and more importantly Dunkin Donuts credibility takes a big hit for this as far as I am concerned. You cannot lie in social media. You should not mislead. Social Media is like your parents, they will always find out eventually and you will be much worse off than if you had just told the truth in the first place. And by the way, he should have done it, and taken a picture. It would have been awesome.

The end of the article talks about David Ready Jr. the winemaker at Murphy-Go0de. The winery is hiring a social media person to tweet about wine.

But there have been drawbacks, too. During a recent interview Mr. Ready was asked if he used Twitter. When he said no, his publicist gave him a stern warning. “She told me to stop telling them I don’t have a Twitter account,” he said. “But then I thought, ‘Aren’t we hiring someone to do that for us?’ ”

Mr. Ready is precisely correct and the publicist, not surprisingly, is an idiot. Why would she set him up to lie about a Twitter account? Is he supposed to say yes? Someone will check and find out he does not. Remember, your parents. Or if they give him an account but there is nothing in it, it’s just as bad. There is no crime in not having a Twitter account. I’m sure Mr. Ready keeps pretty busy looking after the wine, he doesn’t need to Twitter. In fact, has he said, they are hiring someone to handle Twitter for them. It’s sort of the whole point.

The lesson here is simple, don’t lie. You won’t get away with it and when you don’t someone will Tweet about it or write a blog post about it. If you especially unlucky or if it is a particularly juicy one it may go viral, spreading to tens of thousands of people. In addition, never forget the Long Tail of the Internet. Those blog posts will be around for a very long time. One of the best things about the Internet is that it is forcing business to play fair. It’s much harder to get away with the kinds of nonsense companies typically try to get away with. That’s good for all of us.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Dunkin Donuts, honesty, lying, Murphy-Goode, social media, The Long Tail, twitter

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