The News That Made Us Think (Ink)

Last month, ThinkInk released The ThinkInk Review, a collection of insights and commentaries on topics that changed PR, media, marketing and our world in 2010.

Looking back on 2010, it seems that while the media roller-coaster moved at break-neck speed, unemployment rates and business was painfully stuck on pause. On the positive side, it was a year of reinvention for those who were unsatisfied with putting up with the status quo any longer. In other words, a year full of paradoxes.

It was also a year steamrolled by a perpetual news cycle, incessant Twitter feeds and the sharing of useless information, Apple, Facebook and more Facebook, and a collectively skewed perspective characterized by fear and hopelessness, as evidenced by the most divisive political climate this country has seen in decades. All of these factors played their part in shaping our media landscape, the way we devour our information, and our trust of what we hear, see and read.

The ThinkInk Review is a varied collection of my reactions and responses to many of the events that shaped our world in 2010, from a PR and media perspective. Some of these events (Wikileaks anyone?) will continue to shape our lives in 2011 and beyond, while others may fade into the pages of our collective history with far less fanfare. But in one way or another, they have all had an impact.

The collection is available for download here - The ThinkInk Review. And as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below.

What rock ’n’ roll can teach us about mobile and social marketing

I was watching the Grammys a couple of months ago, and as I sat through the usual clumsy award show mash-up of acts, I could not help but think that the more important event took place earlier that day.

It was not nearly as famous or well publicized, but it spoke more directly to the future of music and marketing than the Grammys ever could.

The event I am referring to was “The Social Media Rock Stars Summit — Music and Mobile: Beyond the Ringtone.”

American ideal
Billed by the Recording Academy as a “milestone conversation,” the Summit featured celebs and luminaries from both the music and social media industries exploring the relationship between music and mobile beyond the well-established and somewhat over ringtone and individual track download.

Adam Lambert and Chamillionaire took the stage to discuss how mobile devices have altered the way consumers interact with music, how artists can connect with fans through mobile apps and social media and how the music industry can embrace the new mobile world.

It turns out we can learn more from these stars than how to apply eyeliner and sport bling.

In all seriousness, savvier musicians have been climbing all over mobile to advance their careers and connect with their fans, proving that mobile marketing is not just for the retail industry.

If rock stars can market themselves via mobile, then so can other entities.

The moral of the story – and what I took away from the Social Media Summit – is that even if you do not have the publicity machinery enjoyed by recording artists, you can still apply some 21st-century rock star principles to engage audiences and keep them up to date with what is happening.

You do not have to trash a suite at the Chateau Marmont to generate mobile buzz.

Continue reading the article at Mobile Marketer here

Knowledge Rules When It Comes to Social Media

Last month, just after the SXSW festival in Austin, I read a column by Eric Schwartzman on Spinfluencer. My first reaction was “I wonder if I’d have missed The Strokes’ set to sit on this panel?” closely followed by “No, probably not, but it seems interesting nonetheless.” But blogging about it definitely beats listening to the Stokes new album again, so here goes…

Schwartzman raises an interesting – and I think valid – namely that by “outsourcing” the minutiae of social media maintenance, companies are ceding most of the efficacy of the channel. His position is that social media is a bilateral pipeline direct to consumers, and that a company that allows a PR, marketing or advertising agency manage that pipeline, then the social media strategy becomes anemic. No agency, argues Schwartzman, can know as much about a company’s products or services as the employees of that company, who by the way, are more invested in the company’s survival than any agency might be. He goes further (a bit too far, really) to say that agencies that tout their social media capabilities as an inducement to land clients are behaving unethically.

While I agree with the principle behind Schwartzman’s argument: in order for a social media strategy to be effective, it must be predicated on a give-and-take of information, and to be truly valuable, that information must be sound. And going through the social media motions does not deliver any discernable benefit – just ask the thousands of enterprises out there with double- to low-triple-digit Twitter followers or Facebook fans that keep posting or tweeting banal, self-serving bits of nothing, ignoring comments, and scratching their heads over why their brand engagement isn’t skyrocketing now that they have a handle and a fan page. Of course, if these companies are relying on a third-party agency to execute this limp strategy, they’ve made a drastically irresponsible choice in agency.

Which brings me to my real point…

It’s the knowledge behind the social media strategy that matters, not who signs the paycheck of the person executing it.

Yes, a company employee may have more insight into the company’s core business than an agency representative might, but that’s not an inherent quality. Schwartzman may be writing from his own experience, but with all due respect, mine differs significantly.

My agency delivers social media solutions to clients, but we pride ourselves on having both the industry and client-specific knowledge to make those solutions effective. Yes, that means personalized attention. Yes, that means making sure that every one of our agency staffers tweeting on behalf of a client knows at least as much about the client’s operations as whatever internal intern they might have charged with maintaining the Twitter feed were we not their agency.

And yes, all of that means a little more investment in our clients than the big agencies might be willing to make.

I’d go so far as to say there are plenty of agencies like mine out there that understand the power of social media marketing and are dedicated to getting it right.

Or maybe there aren’t, in which case my email is right at the bottom of this post.