Digital Marketing: More Than Just Community Management
Alrighty there – I’m hoping to keep this one quite short and sweet. I got into a rapid-fire Twitter DM conversation with a ridiculously smart soon-to-be-grad from Boston recently about where digital marketing is heading. Clearly, social media has been a hot topic for quite some time, but a lot of that industry’s glamour is starting to fade. It’s not that social media is ineffective. It’s that a lot of people hopped on the bandwagon without really getting it, and we ended up with this. So what happens now is that a number of young, smart minds are opting to turn back to traditional, creative advertising (or hopping into startups) instead of pursuing digital marketing.
In Which Brands Enter Quora and Formspring
Along with the proliferation of social media channels to manage came the inevitable rise of social media customer service/support. Tired of recycled call centers and roundabout hold music loops, consumers took their questions and support issues to social channels – Twitter, Facebook – because community managers were often able to provide quicker answers. This is natural behavior from consumers, as they are simply seeking the path of least resistance (or rather, the path of least annoyance).
But from the marketing side, this is a problem. An overflow of support questions on Twitter and Facebook means that community managers, social media strategists, etc. get to spend less time actually delivering fun, creative surprises to consumers and spend more time moderating for support issues (this of course, varies by brand). Twitter and Facebook were never intended to be based around question and answer.
The Future’s Made of Virtual Pinsanity
For a moment, I contemplated titles for this blog post such as, “Pinsane in the Brain,” “Pinertia Creeps,” or “Original Pin.” Well, you get the point. Because the Internet won’t shut up about Pinterest, neither will I. It seems as though every agency, client, marketer and anyone else of business stature is working to grab a piece of the Pinterest pie before the novelty wears off.
What I find most interesting, and simultaneously worrisome, is the buzz around copyright and legality on Pinterest. There is no shortage of blog posts and articles outlining Pinterest’s TOS (updated here) and the ramifications for brands that pin copyrighted content without consent of the owner (as if brands haven’t been doing that for years on Facebook and Twitter). Besides the fact that this sounds like a mini-SOPA waiting to happen within the confines of Pinterest – in that anybody could inadvertently get a slap on the wrist or worse for unknowingly pinning content that was never allowed to be pinned – this issue disturbs me simply because of what it means about the state of content on the Internet.
Thoughts from #SXSW on Managing Gen Y Talent
The fun thing about not attending SXSW weekend? San Francisco’s population is nearly cut in half, effectively leaving more room for people like me to tromp around and do whatever it is that geeks do on weekends. (Blog?). The not-so-fun thing about not attending SXSW? Well, that complete list would be for a whole other blog post, but in a nutshell, I miss out on awesome panels and conversations that actually matter to me. Case in point: the Manage Gen Y panel provided a bounty of tips for finding, hiring, managing and evolving amazing Gen Y talent. I’ve previously written at length about how my generation is portrayed in the media, especially as it pertains to the job market. I wanted to highlight a few gems that surfaced on Twitter from this Manage Gen Y discussion. So without further ado…
It All Depends How You Look At It
In a recent visit to the San Francisco-based coworking space, The Glint, I had a conversation that really stuck with me with one of the housemates. We were discussing where innovative ideas come from, and how they arise. The housemate held up a wine glass, and asked a coworker of mine and me what he was holding. Instinctively, we said he was holding a wine glass. This was a correct answer, but it was not the correct answer. In fact, he noted, there really was no correct answer.
