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In his new book, PRESENT SHOCK: When Everything Happens Now (Current; March 15, 2013), Rushkoff introduces the phenomenon of presentism, or – since most of us are finding it hard to adapt – present shock. Alvin Toffler’s radical 1970 book, Future Shock, theorized that things were changing so fast we would soon lose the ability to cope. Rushkoff argues that the future is now and we’re contending with a fundamentally new challenge. Whereas Toffler said we were disoriented by a future that was careening toward us, Rushkoff argues that we no longer have a sense of a future, of goals, of direction at all. We have a completely new relationship to time; we live in an always-on “now,” where the priorities of this moment seem to be everything.... Rushkoff identifies the five main ways we’re struggling, as well as how the best of us are thriving in the now...
Are you wondering how consumers are using social media? Would you like some insights to help your business better understand people’s social habits? In this article, I examine a report published by Edison Research focused on people’s latest social habits. These findings provide useful insights about consumer behavior and how your business can respond. Here are 9 of the most interesting findings from the study....
The Online Marketing Institute is please to honor 40 digital strategists in marketing, selected as the leaders that have lead the interactive marketing industry through innovation and education during the past year. This ‘Top 40′ list is compromised of OMI educators, authors, digital strategists and speakers, known for: Embracing the latest integrated digital strategies and technologiesAdvancing the industry through education — speaking, blogging, and teachingDriving game-changing results for their clients and organizations As marketers continue to shift offline budget to online channels, its critical that they stay on top of the latest changes, proven best practices, and newest opportunities. Through their speaking, blogging, and teaching, the leaders below are enabling marketers to do just that.... Here is our annual list of ‘Top 40 Digital Strategists in Marketing’, in alphabetical order...
Social Media has had a terrific ride for the past several years, but the days of easy growth are gone. In fact, the days of easy anything in social are behind us. For many brands, 2013 will be a year of social media disappointment.
With so many consumers spending so much time in social media and expecting so much of brands, our investments in social will continue to grow, but that does not mean our results will grow, at least in easily measurable ways. Certainly, all of our brands will earn more fans, see more comments and collect more retweets, but we all know this is no longer enough--our bosses want to know the business results we are delivering, and fans simply are not a business benchmark.
Success in 2013, more than ever, will be measured in difficult metrics and not easy ones, and increasingly, it will come not just from the Marketing department but from every corner of the enterprise. To succeed in 2013 and beyond, organizations must recognize how social media is altering the way we live, work and conduct business and not just the way we kill time on Facebook.
Here is where (I believe) social will grow and where it will stumble and stagnate in 2013...
Social media duties are treated more as add-on job functions, and don’t often get a dedicated internal team, details a [download page] new Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey. 65% of the survey respondents – the majority of whom hail from organizations that employ more than 100 people – said that social media tasks are assigned on top of current job responsibilities. 27% said they have an internal team that works exclusively on social media, while an additional 5% said they have both an internal department and use an outside agency or partner. Just 3% said they fully outsource all their social media efforts. That 3% figure reflects an apparent unwillingness to spend dollars – rather than time – on social media, a trend that was found by Reply! recently, in research examining SMB use of paid social media services.
The Ragan survey found that when it comes to tools used to measure social media, a 59% majority rely on free tools, while 35% use a combination of free and paid tools. Only 6% use only paid tools, the most popular of which are Hootsuite (31%), Radian6 (25%), and Vocus (17%). (Among free tools, Google Analytics and Google Alerts both easily lead all others.)...
One of the most unhelpful assumptions I come across most when I'm talking about how things spread is this: our assumption that the thing is the thing. In other words, that in order to spread, a thing (or idea or word) must have something special about it; that it must be something about the thing that makes it spreadable (or "sticky") if you prefer that term.... [Here's the thing. It's not about the thing. It's about the people. ~ Jeff]
Can we have an honest conversation among friends? Trying to keep up with social media is overwhelming! Little wonder. ...Not only do the social media platforms shift every day, the rules of engagement are changing constantly, too. Can anybody on earth keep up with the real and rumored changes just to Facebook’s EdgeRank formula?
What we considered best practices six months ago are passe’ today. Yes, social media is overwhelming, especially when there is pressure to master every new platform that comes along.
But as a professional marketer, you must keep up. How is this possible? Here are seven ideas to help you stay calm and carry on....
With the New Year right around the corner, there's no doubt that you are already in the process of planning out your marketing strategy for 2013. With the New Year right around the corner, there’s no doubt that you are already in the process of planning out your marketing strategy for 2013. While much of it may be similar to last year’s strategy, I strongly encourage you to revisit your social game plan. A lot has changed over the last 12 months and without a refresher, you may not be in the best position to succeed. If you need some guidance on what to do, I have got you covered. I recently surveyed 12 of the top thought leaders in social media in an effort to provide you with the support you need to develop a social strategy that will help make 2013 a breakout year for you and your organization. Before you lock in your plans for 2013, reflect on the tips below and incorporate them into game plan.... [Lots of great insight from these social media thinkers ~ Jeff]
Pinterest is the hottest social media site around, and women are the movers and shakers of this visual media revolution. Contests, mood boards, and remote idea-sharing: Women entrepreneurs are finding new and powerful ways to inspire and engage new and existing audiences via Pinterest.... [Pinterest is fueling innovation ~ Jeff]
...Social media has become the new gold star. Recent studies have shown that talking about yourself on social media platforms activates the brain’s rewards centres, in much the same way as that gold star.
Science confirms: we are all narcissists
A May 2012 study by Harvard University’s Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab concluded that sharing information about ourselves activates the brain’s reward centre a great deal more than when we share information about others. It is well documented that the reward centre is tickled by rewards like food, sex and money, but this is the first time it has been confirmed that self-disclosure is a rewarding activity for the brain.
The implications of these findings are vast, telling us a great deal about what we’re like as people, and how social media fits into human nature. Estimates tell us that only 30-40% of our face-to-face communications revolve around ourselves, while over 80% of our social media posts are about ourselves....
[More interesting social media research tidbits inside ~ Jeff]
Tweet Tweet Social media marketing may not be rocket science, but there is still a large science component to it. If you want your content to spread, you have to look at the numbers and stop making gut decisions. Over the last 5 years I’ve learned how to successfully push content out on through social media so that it spreads virally. And more importantly I’ve learned what not to do. So if you want to ensure that your content spreads, avoid the following 7 mistakes... [Quick Sprout CEO @NeilPatel shares valuable insight and social media experience ~ Jeff]
Social Media around the World 2012 report by InSites Consulting (data collected by SSI and translations by No Problem). [Superb though lengthy presentation, useful for every social media, PR, content and marketing pro ~ Jeff ]
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...Today I am surrendering my Facebook account, because my participation on the site is simply too inconsistent with the values I espouse in my work. In my upcoming book Present Shock, I chronicle some of what happens when we can no longer manage our many online presences. I argue - as I always have - for engaging with technology as conscious human beings, and dispensing with technologies that take that agency away. Facebook is just such a technology. It does things on our behalf when we're not even there. It actively misrepresents us to our friends, and - worse - misrepresents those who have befriended us to still others. To enable this dysfunctional situation -- I call it “digiphrenia” -- would be at the very least hypocritical. But to participate on Facebook as an author, in a way specifically intended to draw out the "likes" and resulting vulnerability of others, is untenable. Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences, and activities over time -- our "social graphs" -- into a commodity for others to exploit....
There aren’t many companies in the world that generate 1 million visitors and over 60,000 leads through their website each month. Especially B2B. HubSpot does.... HubSpot has figured out that Google wants great content, and lots of it. So rather than gaming the system with lots of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, (which I rant about in my #1 Forbes article ‘The Death of SEO, The Rise of Social, PR, and Real Content) they do the obvious… They generate lots of really good content....
Did you know that just over one quarter (27 percent) of organisations have a dedicated social media team, with almost two-thirds (65 percent) assigning social media tasks on top of existing job responsibilities, typically to employees working in marketing or PR? These findings come courtesy of a survey by Ragan, which also revealed that a combination of relevant education and experience is the most sought-after quality for a company looking to hire someone to work in their social media department, and that the vast majority of firms (86 percent) measure their social media ROI by standard metrics such as Likes and followers. 65 percent of organisations cite lack of time as their biggest stumbling block to social media success, and 87 percent say that increasing brand awareness is their number one goal....
Are you addicted to white papers, just as I am? Well, my friends at Awareness, Inc. have put together an epic list of the top 10 social media whitepapers of 2012. Enjoy the white paper goodness. To help you understand important shifts in the social media landscape and how they affect marketing, Awareness Inc combed through the juiciest research findings from 2012, pulling out 10 studies and 30 essential takeaways for any successful marketer and created a guide to help you with them. The ten white papers included are...
With half a billion Twitter accounts, over 1 billion Facebook accounts and an estimated 200m more online users across the world by end 2013, social media is... Over the past four weeks, we’ve interviewed experts across all media channels – TV, radio, magazines, newspapers – and asked about the challenges they’ve faced from social media, the lessons they’ve learnt and their preparation for 2013.
From this audit with heads of social media, communications experts and business leaders, along with our own experiences working with UK and international media owners, we’ve put together a series of observations and insights, identifying clear trends for social media use by media brands in 2013...
[And Twitter will lead the way ~ Jeff]
You hear a lot about marketing with social media—including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and up-and-coming platforms. But how can you make these platforms work together, while staying true to your own brand, too? [Excellent case study ~ Jeff]
Via Kelly Lieberman
Did you know that 16 percent of CEOs say that they use social media as the top way that they engage customers? But this is just the very tip of the iceberg – CEOs expect their use of social media to more than triple in the next five years, rising to 57 percent of all chief execs. In the largest study of its kind undertaken, IBM conducted more than 1,700 in-depth, face-to-face interviews with CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders from around the globe, detailing their social media findings in the following infographic.... [Social media slowly gains CEO interest ~ Jeff]
They say you learn something new everyday...And one of the things I recently learned was a new oxymoron: a social media budget.Because in most companies, it simply doesn't exist. They expect Fans, Followers, Likes and Pins to fall from the sky. But that's not the worst part... No, the worst part is when you see how companies actually spend a social media budget if they have it. Because most of the time it's wasted on vanity metrics and hot trends. And the problem typically resides with the HIPPOs (highest paid person's opinion), because the highest paid person is also (usually) the least knowledgeable and furthest away from the front-lines. Here are three of the worst ways that companies waste money in social media.... [This is an excellent, thoughtful post with some good lessons and perspective about the past in technology ~ Jeff]
IBM asked CEOs all over the world what they believe is going to happen with social media for the next three to five years. What they had to say was revealing. “For the first time in my career, I feel old. People in their 20s work and think about this social stuff in a different way,” a U.K. insurance industry CEO shared. “We’re using it as a way of connecting with friends and socializing; the kids coming up are using it as a way of life.”
But do most CEOs acknowledge what is happening with social?
Over half of the CEOs "expect social channels to be a primary way of engaging customers." [But are they committing resources and does social improve the bottom line? ~ Jeff]
Mobile has proliferated every free second we have — social media is one of the bits of content we happen to consume on our phones and tablets — but it is by no means the only thing. The lesson to be heeded here (especially if you have rich media content to distribute) is do not just post it to Facebook and Twitter and hope that it reaches your audience. Chances are that a small sliver of your audience will see it; but more importantly ensure that your entire arsenal of online marketing weaponry is mobile ready — if not mobile first. [Sage advice ~ Jeff]
This Sample Social Media Policy is the result of over two-years of research, extensive interviews with stakeholders from multiple corporate and government agencies and more than a decade of experience serving clients as a strategic communications consultant, with a specialty in online communications, web design, search engine optimization and, since its advent, social media. On Jan. 25, 2012, the US National Labor Relations Board issued their second social media report, offering further clarification over an earlier compilation of cases it released August 18, 2011, available as a PDF. This revised social media policy template takes into account the NLRB's guidance to human resource professionals for the lawful development of social media policies for employees. Social media policies are not one size fits all. The right policy for your organization will (1) reinforce your organization's existing corporate culture and (2) provide practical guidance to those governed by the social media policy.... [This social media policy template is an excellent starting point for a DIY guide for social media and employees. Available free under a Creative Commons license. ~ Jeff]
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Absolutely a recommended read: Presentism? Provocative preview of social media theorist Douglas Rushkoff's new book "Present Shock."