This post is not meant in anyway to make me look good…in fact, when all is said and done, it may make me look bad. But it is what I did and said, and what happened. It’s here as a point of reference for a larger discussion, to be posted soon – stay tuned.

Jamming your resume into 140 characters, slapping a #hireme or #socialcv on it, and spamming everyone with it is not going to get you a job.

There’s no reason your firm – big, small or tiny – can’t have your own internal program for creating and using video for marketing. See how we did it!

It’s easy to Monday Morning Quarterback a PR or Social Media disaster.

It seems like our new favorite pastime, with a robust 2012 behind us and what looks like a great 2013 coming on. It’s hard, when you’re in the moment, to know what the right thing to do is, or what’s the right tone to take, or what specific tactical actions you’ll employ. But there’s one thing that’s always in fashion: stopping, thinking, getting your facts and message straight, and then moving forward in a clear, unified fashion.

Of course, we all know by now that that’s not what Applebee’s did. Instead, they turned what was already a bad situation into a total charlie-foxtrot, as documented so brilliantly in R.L. Stollar’s awesome photo essay which probably has about several hundred thousand views at this point.

So what should Applebee’s have done instead?

Before … Read More »

If people are talking positively about your brand, you need to find them, friend them, and fully integrate these Brand Advocates into your marketing and sales efforts.

And, when I say “friend,” I don’t mean you actually have to become for-real BFFs, but you can’t just follow them on Twitter or like a few of their Facebook statuses. You really need to engage them, get to know about them, thank them, reward them, treat them like a part of the family. Nurture and care for these people, make them a part of your (company’s) life, and you will reap great dividends.

Previously, in my post If You Ain’t In It For The Customers, Get The Heck Out, I talked a little bit about why this is so important. Customers will talk about their experience with your brand; either as a response to … Read More »

Getting new customers ain’t easy. A lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into earning new business. Protect that investment: use weak ties to extend the lifespan of customer relationships.

As we all know, repeat customers are pretty much universally preferred to one-offs, especially in the professional services world, where the average cost of customer acquisition can be very high. We work really hard to pull in customers; the smart firm will also devote energy to keep good customers in the stable. Obviously, customer retention requires good work product, but also it requires managing the relationship to create an excellent overall customer experience.

Think about all the social capital that is tied up in a single customer. There’s the relationships between the firm-side sales team and the client-side influencers & purse-string-holders; the firm-side practice leader & project manager, and the client-side point-person/engagement … Read More »

When an employee leaves the firm, what happens to their social capital? The social media relationships, contacts & networks – who owns them? What’s a marketer to do? Is there way to protect a firm’s leads and contacts, and keep them in the social graph, even if the employee who “owns” the contact leaves?

Got six minutes? Grab a coffee, sit back, and let me tell you all about it.

Seth Cargiuolo
05-11-12

Fair Warning: This post is wicked long. You might want to grab a beverage and a snack for this one.

You’ve got to have a strategy. Tactics deployed in a vacuum, absent guiding principles and chosen capriciously, will hurt you, not help you (even if they are fun).

I talk to lots of people in the course of my business, and when the topics of “digital” or “social” come up, one of the more common requests I get is for an example of an actual strategy – usually for external marketing or internal communications or even as part of a professional development plan. I think “digital” encompasses so much more than just those things, but it’s the area with which folks are most familiar.

The vast majority of fear, uncertainty & doubt I see in this area seems to be coming from people … Read More »

On May 23rd, the The AMCF will be hosting “Social Networking and the Modern Consulting Company: Staying Ahead of the Curve.”

I’ll be on a panel with IBM’s Brandi Boatner, Tata’s Tonya McKinney, PwC’s Jack Teuber, and Ari Kaplan. We’ll be discussing many aspects of social media, including governance and use for thought leadership and content marketing. Come on down – with this crew, it’s sure to be as entertaining as it is enlightening!

Very often I hear business people – even marketers and technologists – using the words social and digital interchangeably.

This makes me cringe. It tells me people are not taking a holistic view and are missing the overall point (and therefore, the challenge/opportunity binary, as well).

It’s not their fault, obviously. The media seems not to differentiate them. There’s a dictionary’s worth of jargon being slung around by all manner of “experts” that further confuses things. The market is flooded with platforms, tools, and services all purporting to help you get a handle on a variety of different “social” and “digital” whatevers.

It’s no wonder people aren’t seeing the forest – they’re too busy being beaten about the head and neck with the trees.

Complicating matters is the fact that “social” is obviously a subset of “digital”. Those who take the time … Read More »