Corporate communications pro Stephanie Grayson and I discuss our key takeaways on digital advertising from the Ad Age Digital conference in New York in April, 2012. We take a deep dive into storytelling; the ubiquitousness of branded content; the implications of ready access for advertising data; and how at least one big brand may have lost its way. Continue reading →

Social media monitoring is growing as a consumer research tool to inform customer service, product development and marketing activities. Going the next step — from mere monitoring to careful listening — can help brands uncover a wealth of additional, rich insights. True listening requires putting an ear to a wide spectrum of conversations, thoughtful interpretation and judgment of the data, then applying what's discovered to improve listening activities. And listening research is not limited to social channels. In this conversation with Frank Cotignola of Kraft Foods' Consumer Insight and Strategy Group, we explore how social media listening can offer new understanding through sentiment analysis and access to broader topics that — in the past — you may not have had the funds to tap. Continue reading →

Social channels are grabbing a larger share of our interest and investment as customer engagement channels. And there's little argument about the value of social channels to help us gauge customer sentiment to inform our strategies and activities intended to enhance meaningful interaction with our brands. According to Banafsheh Ghassemi — and I suspect you will agree after listing to our conversation — relying too heavily on sentiment and other analyses from social media can create blind spots for marketers in our multi-channel world. We need to be listening on all of the channels in which we engage our customers. Continue reading →

In today's convo, we look at how one company's blog-centric content marketing strategy benefits from solid vision and good tools. I speak with Emily Bosma, Digital Media & Content Anthropologist at Turnstone Furniture and Mike Lewis, President of content marketing platform Kapost. Turnstone is using Kapost to help manage its B2B blog — and bloggers — to improve workflow and analyze post effectiveness. Continue reading →

The sales growth of expense reporting software company Expensify was built on more than the features of its product. The company creates advocacy among employees within customer companies to influence those responsible for procurement. This activation, along with responsive support — via email, online videos from Grovo and multiple webinars each week — supplants the need for a traditional sales organization. Continue reading →

When Pepsi's Tropicana wanted to give a social lift to its recently launched Trop50, it faced the challenge of creating advocacy at scale among bloggers as part of its Trop50 True Resolutions Facebook experience. Working with Social Chorus, Tropicana focused on the Power Middle of relevant bloggers. For most brands, these are the true influencers, as opposed to those with the largest networks or those that may be loyal product users, but have small communities. In this convo, I speak with Gina Judge, Senior Manager of Communications for Tropicana, Greg Shove, Founder & CEO of Social Chorus and Melissa Murphy, Activation Manager at Social Chorus about how they activated bloggers through both earned and paid efforts for the Trop50 True Resolutions campaign. Continue reading →

Cyberbullying is a challenging issue for teens and young adults. According to research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a majority of teens say their own reaction has been to ignore mean behavior when they see it on social … Continue reading →

How are those at the C-level of America's largest companies maintaining their brands' reputations and dealing with crisis as news cycles continue to shorten because of Twitter and emerging platforms? And are there lessons for small- and medium sized businesses to be found in their travails? In this conversation, Bill Wohl, who recently served as Senior Vice President & Chief Communications Officer for Hewlett-Packard, brings his experiences down to earth. Continue reading →

Toby Webb, founder and chairman of Ethical Corporation, discusses brands' needs to develop ways to manage their corporate communications and customer engagement in the context of short news cycles and near-instant social media sharing. Among the topics covered are the relationship between business objectives and reputation; how PR has evolved from press releases; the essential nature of local knowledge; and the perception that it takes a generational change in top management for companies function in today's always-on communications channels. Continue reading →

Last month, I was on a great panel at the Inbound Marketing Summit in New York City. The well-grounded discussion on how inbound marketing has evolved and where it's headed was facilitated by Chris Brogan, President of Human Business Works with panelists Laura Fitton, Inbound Marketing Evangelist at HubSpot, Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of Simply Measured and Bernie Borges, CEO of Find and Convert. Continue reading →