Archive for Social Media
Selling Social Media to Management
Posted by: | CommentsMy daily “Social Media Examiner” was delivered to my email box, as usual, this morning. The lead article is “9 Ways to Sell Social Media to the Boss,” by Ekaterina Walter,
a social media strategist at Intel. These are really valuable tips that are working for one of the corporate leaders in social media, Intel. I urge you to read the article in full but here is a summary of her main points:
- Display current conversations
- Don’t leave out competitor’s information
- Show your industry peers’ successes and failures
- Use data
- Start small
- Do risk analysis and contingency planning
- Seek outside help
- Create guidelines and enable your employees
- Stay on course
How is your company doing?
Guidelines for Write Speak Sell Guest Blog Posts
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been thinking that I should establish guidelines for guest posts on my blog, and have been tooling around the web and reading the guidelines of other folks who accept guest blogs. I wrote about this earlier and said I’d be drawing up a list of guidelines, so here they are.
It’s not that I’m such a big shot that people are clamoring to write for me and I’m holding them off with a stick. No, it’s more that I want to avoid miscommunications or hurt feelings when I receive a guest post (which I most likely have requested) and it’s not quite right for my blog.
These are not engraved in stone, so I’d appreciate your suggestions. Here goes:
- The post needs to align with my brand: business writing that sells. Is your blog relevant to my audience? I reserve the right to make exceptions. Sometimes a piece is so good, even if it’s a little off the subject, that I’ll run with it.
- It should be from 300-600 words with an image supplied by the author.
- It needs to be well written (I know this seems obvious) and grammatically correct.
- Every guest post by definition is self-promoting but it can’t be an outright sales pitch.
- No affiliate links.
- Internal links should be limited to your own blog and to sources that support the article’s main points.
- My preference is for an original article. I’m agreeable to posting blogs that were previously published if they are chock full of information that would benefit my readers. But I need to know in advance so I can indicate the original source of the blog. The blog can’t infringe on anyone else’s copyrighted material.
- If I use a guest post, which links back to the author’s site, I’d appreciate a link back to my site.
- The author’s bio should be about 50 words with a link back to the writer’s site. It will go at the bottom of the post with a possible comment by me.
- If a guest post on my site receives comments, then the author should respond to each one. It’s only common courtesy
- It would be hard to think I wouldn’t publish a post because it doesn’t meet my criteria, but I do need to reserve that right.
So, what do you think? Anything to add?
Is its New Social Media Director Important Enough for McDonald’s to Announce?
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McDonald's has a new social media director
I’m not sure how I came upon the story first – about Rick Wion being appointed McDonald’s first Director of Social Media – but I thought it was great news because social media is so important now to every company and every human being, actually. So, after trolling around the web to read a few more stories about Mr. Wion, I decided to go to McDonald’s website to read its press release with the official announcement. Nada.
I tried searching his name, social media director, the name of his boss, combining them, and decoupling them. I found nothing (I hope McDonald’s corrects this impression if they read this and I’m wrong). I thought this would be a big deal for the company.
How important is a social media director in McDonald’s or any company? I would think it’s very important – but maybe I’m “into it” more I imagine other people to be. So I went to the trusty Google key word search tool and typed in “social media director.” Not enough data to measure. What? Isn’t social media the greatest thing to hit since the manual typewriter? Aren’t companies scrambling to attract beaucoup Facebook fans and Tweeps?
True, and I was relieved to find that Google shows 1,220,000 searches for “social media.” That’s a nice hefty number. But….that’s less than 1% of 307 million Americans (OK, we shouldn’t count new-born babies) who cared enough about social media to search the term last month.
I have visions of this very small tribe (thanks Seth) of social media maniacs who think they are part of a very large tribe in a world that revolves around pixels and blogs and Steve Jobs. Not so.
There are an awful lot of people who still own the first cell phone they ever bought, could give a hoot about social networks (165,000 searches) and wouldn’t know a tweep if they fell over one.
I’m still convinced that social media and the Internet are essential as a tool for commerce and for doing good. But it does surprise me how few true believers there are out there. The numbers look big, but social media is still an * for most people.
Like Salmon Swimming Upstream, Adapt, Migrate or Die
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You might not think there are parallels between salmon and social media, but there are. Like salmon swimming upstream, businesses need to adapt to the new communications channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, blogs and other social media networks to reach their clients and prospects and employees — or die.
My niece Laura got me thinking about this. She told me she had attended a seminar at her local aquarium about the evolution of salmon, which are among the most adaptive of fish. They swim many miles upstream to spawn and then die, while the juveniles swim back out to sea to begin the cycle again. Only the most hardy survive, as they adapt to the challenging journey. Her instructor included a reference to Charles Darwin, who famously postulated that the animal species must adapt, migrate or die, just as the salmon do. Read More→
