Social Marketing Revolution

In Part 2 of his social media marketing safety tips, Marty Smith shares how organisations can act to help prevent themselves being hit by a crisis on the internet.

Social Media It's The Conversation, Stupid is about the new rules of branding being created by a social world.

Does your business LOVE social media marketing OR are you simply complying with lowest requirements. Take the test to find out and discover tips to learn how to love social media marketing.

SMM Lessons From The Pit & The Food Bank
Poking fun at my @CrowdFunde cofounder Phil Buckley today I wrote a new caption for The Pit's Cuegrass photo. I noted that either Phil was holding court or Cuegrass was coming soon.

My "inside" joke with my partner Phil, former "Mayor" of The Pit BBQ in Raleigh, NC, IS THE MOST DISCUSSED CONTENT on my social nets today. Let that statement sink in for a minute.

What do you call it when someone blows up your Tweet? Answer: Social Media GOLD.

My "inner circle" social nets have about 12,000 followers. I share content from Scoop.it (daily shares with 2,300 followers @Martin (Marty) Smith ), G+ (2,896 followers share daily https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MartinWSmith/posts ),Twitter (@Scenttrail 4,200 followers share daily http://www.twitter.com/scenttrail ) and  Pinterest (4,929 followers post daily http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/ ) and the most shared post today is an "inside" joke with a handful of friends.

A handful of friends and some SMART social media marketers shared some great social media marketing lessons today!

The Pit, our favorite BBQ joint in downtown Raleigh immediately RTed my new caption of their photo with a supportive tag ("now that's a caption"). The Pit's RT prompted several Cuegrass, the event I wrote the new caption for, vendors to RT too.

This is the POWER of the recognized conversation.

The Pit could have been MAD I wrote a new caption for their Cuegrass event pic. Nope, too smart for that they provided encouragement and RTed demonstrating what Phil and I are working so hard to create at CrowdFunde - conversations RULE.

AND the more responsive, lean, funny and fun your social content is the more shares you achieve. The more shares you achieve the more awareness you gain. When I opened a new chapter on Cuegrass the Pit jumped on it. Now I see Phil got home and joined the conversation. Phil's nets are the size of mine so the Pit just picked up 20,000 potential followers or attendees at this year's Cuegrass (I still don't even know what it is lol). 

So, not only is the Pit the home of our favorite BBQ and Cuegrass, but today they've put their secret rub down long enough to share two important social marketing lessons:

* When someone is talking about YOU ENCOURAGE THEM.
* Encourage them IN Social Media so the "lesson' is immediately shared and "social kudos" points transfer. 

Duh, who knew. Actually LISTENING and being SOCIAL are important to social media marketing success. The Pit knew, several of their vendors know and the Food Bank knows (https://twitter.com/FoodBankCENC ). In Fact my "cool follow of the day" award goes to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina since they FOLLOWED ME!

Not giving them the award for following me as much as seeing a great conversation and jumping in with both feet. Every Twitter following that is only a tiny % of those following them could take a lesson from the Food Bank. You can't create relationships with people you don't follow.

And, as the Food Bank demonstrated, when you see a great conversation happening jump in, SHARE and FOLLOW. What do you call it when someone writes a new caption for your photo? Answer: User Generated Content GOLD and I hope you are as smart about what to do with SMM gold as the tribe that formed around my "inside joke" on The Pit's Cuegrass photo today.

And whatever Cuegrass is and whenever it is happening I hope it is as fun as the picture :). Marty

Social Media Snob Test
The purpose of social media is to connect, to BE SOCIAL. Better to NOT be on social media than to be on social and look like an arrogant snob. Not being on social can be forgiven. Being a snob in this day an age is difficult to forgie.

You Know Your Company Is A Social Media Snob If...

* You follow less than 50% of your Twitter followers.
- Following a tiny % of your followers is the ultimate snobbery because it limits communication (you can't DM unless you follow) and you can't REWARD unless you follow. 
- When an expert in your area with 10x the following as your company has (at the moment) follows you FOLLOW THEM BACK!!

* You company doesn't Retweet.
- When you Retweet you share someone's take. You are saying, "this is good enough to share" and that statement is a reward and and a way to "mentor" your space.

* Your company doesn't respond to @yourcompany notes.
- Not responding in a timely way to @yourcompany notes is an EPIC customer service fail.

* Your company isn't on GPlus.
- Time to come in for the big win AND Gplus is the most disruptive social net because of its proximity to high yield SEO (duy its GOOGLE) and most business verticals are nascent on GPlus because there is a learning curve.

* Your company isn't having conversations.
- If you are still using social media to push messages without listening and responding you look either clueless or a snob (and neither of those are good).

* Your Company isn't on Instagram or Pinterest.
- Marketing communication is becoming highly visual so to not be on either Instragram or Pinterest is snobby since it feels like insisting we continue to do things the old "talk about ourselves to ourselves" way. 

* Your company isn't creating video.
- Video is highly widget-ized and so easy to share content. Video is also a more universal language. I may not speak english but video, done right, can be a cross cultural tool.  

* Your company[s SMM is highly scripted.
- Days of scripting every interaction with customers is long gone.  

Don't be a social media snob either by intention or ignorance because being a SNOB on social media is the wrong signal to send...always.  

Sometimes humans are so engaged with their smartphones that they walk right off a pier. (No, seri..

Coca Cola''s Social Media Power
What this goofy riff proves, beyond a doubt, is those rumors you've been reading about that Coca-Cola knows how to play social media are correct. .Coke understands something we all should.

They are agnostic about content. They will riff positive SM content when there is attention and therefore money to be had. They will riff funny SM content always and they will surf the waves that are there.

What do you think about Coke's Social Media Guard?

Great, easy to understand and visually arresting infographic on how social media marketing is transforming business. Great Mashable post on 4 ways businesses are being transformed inspired the graphic: http://mashable.com/2009/09/22/social-media-business/

Crowdfunding As New Marketing Channel
Entrepreneurs are excited about being able to crowdfund stocks based on the late October SEC ruling, but crowdfunding can help Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) and Fortune 1000 companies too. Entrepreneurs and large brands share similar Internet marketing needs for:

* Cash.
* Customer Segmentation.
* Social Media Marketing suppoort.
* Media buzz.

Crowdfunding helps with each of these critical marketing needs albeit in different percentages for SMBs and Fortune 1000 companies as this post explains.

"Being active in social media platforms does not mean that you are guaranteed to get higher rankings and better exposure. Sadly, most companies are failing at social media marketing as they are either not implementing the right tactics to market themselves properly.

And when told to classify the different types of people who are failing at social media marketing, I came up with 3 categories."

How The World Spends Its Time Online [INFOGRAPHIC]

Social Media It's The Conversation, Stupid is about the new rules of branding being created by a social world. If you aren't creating LOVE and winning hearts and minds online this Haiku Deck may help you join the revolution (in a good way). 

I love this debate and come down firmly on the side of women (lol). Women are more socially gifted in general. Yes I know that is stereotypical thinking, but I keep finding DATA to support the idea. At one point I wanted to write a book.

The Feminine Future was going to gather data to prove that women are more gifted and social media and social media is the future of marketing so women = the future of marketing. I haven't been able to write that book, but the truth of it feels even more true now.

What do you think? Are men or women better social media marketers?

Mark Kelley, co-founder and CEO at Taggs (www.taggs.co), a visual content marketing software provider, headed a study on how different types of pictures affect the way Facebook users respond to certain brand marketing posts.

HUGE NEWS
Scoop.it adding authorship and the ability to post directly to a GooglePlus brand page is HUGE. I love BOTH tools for different things:

* GooglePlus rocks longform content and conversations.
* Scoop.it helps curate the REACH needed to do effective content marketing in today's Content Shock world.

By adding Google authorship Scoop.it creates benefits for the commons as the rising tide of all those well ranked authors tag up AND they give credit back to individual curators. Brilliant and a BIG vote FOR author rank. I believe Scoop.it is the FIRST major "commons" play to take this significant action.

The action is significant because it shares BACK benefit we, the curators who use Scoop.it, create. There are many "commons" around such as Facebook, Twitter and Kickstarter. Most "commons" feed off the power a user brings and multiplies it by the thousands or even millions using their platform.

This is why the "commons" forms the new math, the new "thank you" economy. Problem is most commons are all TAKE and rarely give back or they don't give back anywhere close to the value they've received. Today Scoop.it said they are willing to collaborate with their curators. BRAVO!

The other new feature, the ability to curate directly into Google brand pages, may make those pages actually work. I find it hard to remember to post beyond my personal page. This new Scoop.it feature will make it easy to curate content to CrowdFunde and Scenttrail.

My friend @Bill Gassettchallenged his GPlus army to use Scoop.it the other day. The reaction wasn't as enthusiastic as he or I would have liked (lol). Now there is NO QUESTION that the combination of G+ and Scoop.it makes a more powerful tool set than either alone. So I would challenge my big time G+ friends to add in Scoop.it since that rising tide will lift OUR BOATS :). M