Archive for Twitter
Life on 9/11 and 10 Years Later
Posted by: | CommentsAs a New Yorker, I am feeling sad and subdued today, the 10th anniversary of a “day that will live in infamy,” to quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, another New Yorker.
This is the question I still get after 10 years:
Where Were You on 9/11?
Image by Vincent Desjardins via Flickr
In my office, at Citigate, the PR agency where I held my last job working for an organization before hanging out my own shingle again. As an agency, we had a large TV monitor hanging from a wall to keep up with the news.
I remember someone calling out, “Come take a look — a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!”
I immediately called my husband to turn on the TV, just before we lost all phone service, which was down for days afterward. We stood glued to the TV, watching the unimaginable happen before our eyes. A young woman in our office lost her 26-year-old husband in the conflagration.
I had a lunch date with a former client, who was flying in from Toronto. She had left me a voice message that she had landed at LaGuardia Airport and was in a taxi on the way to Manhattan. She never made it. She later told me she could see the smoke from the burning towers. Bridges and tunnels were closed, so her taxi was turned away. She went back to the airport, and, as all flights had been cancelled, she tried unsuccessfully to find a room at an airport hotel.
She still had her taxi, now a very valuable asset, and a young man approached her. Would she drive him to Long Island? She did, registered at a motel around the corner, and spent the afternoon in front of the TV with his wife and two young children. It didn’t seem bizarre. In those dark days, lifetime friendships were forged with strangers. We became part of an extended family of survivors — those who personally lived through the experience.
For three days she holed up at her motel, watching TV and eating meals with her new friends. Finally, she found a limo driver who agreed to drive her clear across New York State — a 12-hour trip — to Buffalo. Her husband drove from Toronto to pick her up. Later I learned that three of my office colleagues, stranded in Los Angeles, had rented a car and drove across the country back to New York.
Dear friends, who lived in my building, put together an impromptu dinner for everyone who was around. We ate and watched more TV with replays of the horror of the buildings collapsing and people jumping from the World Trade Center rooftops rather than die in the flames. Our friends had visitors from Florida who drove their car back to Florida and then sold it for them. True story. It took months for life to return to the new normal. The new normal is life after 9/11 because life changed forever after that dreadful day.
Where Are We After 9/11?
The world is a changed place. Iraq. Afghanistan, an African-American President. But, most of all, the rise of social networks has revolutionized our lives — and was the catalyst for the Middle East uprisings that gave new hope to the oppressed as they fought for their freedom and better lives.
Social media has enabled people to communicate with each other, build relationships and forge communities with common goals. Think of these developments since 9/11:
LinkedIn — founded in 2003: 120 million members
Facebook — founded in 2004: 750 million members
Twitter — founded in 2006: 200 million members
There are 156 million blogs — 156 million! Everyone is a communicator and amateur journalist now. How wonderful.
A global village
I haven’t tuned in to watch any of the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies. After 10 years, it’s still too painful to watch. Instead, I’m at my computer, engaging with my families on social media. That’s what we are – families that include friends from around the globe. Mine include Susan from Australia and Catarina from Sweden. We’re in touch regularly. I feel that I know them personally.
We’re all connected. This one big global family that will hopefully build a better world.
Inbound Marketing – Hitting the Online Jackpot
Posted by: | CommentsIs paid advertising dead? To hear the experts, it’s certainly on life support. Inbound marketing is all the rage.
HubSpot is credited with coining the term inbound marketing and the company makes its living by selling services to help companies figure out ways to get customers to come to them instead of the other way around. HubSpot describes it in this diagram:
It’s true that consumers are tuning out paid advertising and more often finding you by searching the web – your blog, through your participation on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and now Google+. Those of us who write blogs are continually fretting over key words and SEO. We distribute our content to a wide range of social media networks. Build it, promote it, and they will come. Or, maybe not.
Inbound Marketing Campaigns
Thing is the companies that are reaping the rewards of inbound marketing are spending millions on inbound marketing campaigns. They run sneaky display ads to get you to their Facebook pages and corner the market for keywords by bidding up the prices of Google ads that will get you to visit their sites. More power to them.
So the notion of inbound marketing being “free” is a misnomer. Of the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, many thousands never receive a visitor or get a comment. A lot of marketers are sitting around still waiting for their first visitor.
Going Offline
I may be in the minority. But going offline has me intrigued. You remember offline don’t you? That involves calling a prospect on the phone and making an appointment to discuss your business in person. Two live people in an office talking to each other. How novel!
I’m being a little facetious, I know, so please forgive me. But it’s important to re-evaluate how we communicate with our customers and how we sell to them. There are too many social media “gurus” out there who are selling programs that promise to “monetize” your blog. Take their advice and rake in the money from products and services you sell directly to consumers. Web searches will lead them to you like the Pied Piper.
What Works For You
Can we all take a breath for a minute and think, really think, about how we’re going to build our business? Inbound marketing is great and growing but it’s not the whole story. I have a friend whose husband is a lawyer with a special niche. She spends $100 a month for a local Google ad that’s always at the top of the page and that’s how he gets all his leads. Paid advertising.
Some people do make a nice living monetizing their blogs. But others use their blogs as brand builders and as portfolios of their work.
Find what works for you. Don’t be embarrassed just because you found your newest customer next to you in line at the movies or in an elevator leaving a networking meeting, like I did.
Is Your Company Socially Media Savvy? Take the Quiz
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Each day, we speak with people who inquire about social media, and the question more often than not is this “Is it even worth pursuing the use of social media as a part of our marketing plan?”
In our opinion, the answer is “Yes!” Social media marketing for both small and large businesses is a must. New media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, Google+ and the use of smart phone technology) is going to bec0me increasingly important to enhance your business and the relationships you build online. Take the short quiz below to assess your progress. On completing the quiz, you will be directed to a page, “How did you score?”
[gravityform id=2 name=IsYour Company Social Media Savvy?]
Bea Fields is President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc., offering leadership coaching and training for high growth companies. She is also the founder and facilitator of the highly popular program Become a Blogging Maniac, which transforms novices into skilled bloggers and communicators.
If you would like help with your social media program, contact Jeannette Paladino.
My Take on Google+ — I’ve Made Time to Hang Out
Posted by: | CommentsI promised myself that I wouldn’t write about Google+ because didn’t I say just a few posts ago that I don’t have time to hang out on any more social networks? I’ve changed my mind. (I’m allowed).
For starters, I want to point out, if you look to your right, that I not only did I join Google+ but you can follow me by adding me to one of your circles. This takes some explaining if you haven’t yet joined Google+ or are just getting your feet wet, as I am.
Google+ Circles
One of the big differences between Google+ and Facebook is that you can segregate your connections into separate categories. Google+ calls them circles. It’s so simple to add people to your circles. Google+ has nicely started four for you called Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following. You can add more circles and name them what you want – college alumni, cooking class, celebrities. You get the idea. I’ve included a screen shot of my circles shown at the left.
This is where I think Google+ has a big edge over Twitter and Facebook. If you’re on the receiving end of a friend’s stream, you will only receive updates that are relevant to your circle. You don’t need to know what his Aunt Tilly ate last night for dinner. Also, you can restrict what you say within each Circle. This allows for private conversations that you can’t have on Facebook.
Hangouts
This is another neat feature. You can start a hangout – a sort of chat room – where you can sign in Skype-like and a live video of you shows up. If your friends are also hanging out you can have a conversation.
I’ve filled out my profile, and my stream is filling with updates from people in my Follow circle who are mainly social media mavens that I also follow on Twitter. I need to start posting more content and adding people to my circles. Of course, it all takes time. But I find Google+ more user friendly than Facebook and I think it will be more useful to my business. Specializing in social media communications, I need to know about this newest network where clients and prospects may be hanging out. So I need to hang out, too.
Have you joined Google+ or do you plan to? What do you think of it? The service is still by invitation-only as they roll it out. Let me know if you would like me to send you an invitation and I will. Oh, and if you enjoyed this post, please click on the +1 to the right. It’s the equivalent of the FB like.
