How do social media tools work within your marketing plan?  Have you thought of how to integrate Twitter into your public relations strategy?  Is your employer brand reflected properly on LinkedIn?  Can social media augment all of these practices?

All very valid questions…

At this week’s Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau Social Media Marketing Workshop hosted by Love Scott and Associates, I led off the discussion with an overview of social media tools and how they integrate into a well planned marketing strategy.  Two other speakers, Claire Celsi ( @ClaireCelsi ), from The Public Relations Project and Ben Stone ( @BenStone ) from RPO Consulting took the helm after me to discuss social media as it integrates with Public Relations and Human Resources, respectively.

For over four hours we took turns stating our case for (and against) social media in traditional corporate marketing, PR, and HR environments.  There was tremendous engagement from a very curious audience and the conversations lasted long past the scheduled 12:pm adjournment.

But when it was time to come back to my office and decompress from the presentations, I thought to myself, “What would ‘C’ level decision-makers need to understand about social media as it applies to their brand?”

And then I thought of this:

“There’s a conversation going on about your brand.  Are you listening?”

(feed readers and Facebookers, click here to watch the video)

…and that was just about 30% of what I found through my Twitter feed, 12 hours before to immediately after the workshop.

It’s time to sit up and start paying attention.  If you’re not using social media to AT LEAST monitor the conversations going on about your brand, then you’re already out of the game.

Here are five simple takeaways from the marketing segment of the workshop:

1. Traditional broadcast marketing has been augmented with social media marketing, creating an online conversation about your brand.  You must be there to take part in the conversation.
2. Social Media Marketing is about building community AROUND your brand.
3. Strategic planning is needed to integrate social media tools with a company’s comprehensive marketing plan.
4. Social media marketing is measurable, but you need to have goals to measure against.
5. Social media marketing should not be taken lightly. Finding a marketing partner that understands how the social media tools can integrate your marketing is imperative.

Has your company started integrating social media into its every day marketing, PR or HR strategies?  How well are you listening?

Food for thought.

Keep Cooking (community-driven conversations)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a sticky wicket, especially for me – basically a “marketing/branding guy.”  I’m still very green, but I’ve learned quite a bit from the HUGE brains of local developers (and friends), as well as those I follow through blogs and other sites.

One of the things that always confused me about achieving a good web ranking (see WebsiteGrader.com) is the number of inbound links you have to your Web site or blog.  One of the items that they score for “marketing effectiveness” are the inbound links to your Web site. I realized the importance of this after checking my own site’s ranking (right now it’s 96.9/100 with 205 inbound links). Inbound links are a big part of Google’s criteria for ranking your site.

How do you get inbound links? According to Website Grader (and most of the HUGE brains), there are a lot of different ways.  For a great overview of the levels of inbound linking available, Website Grader has a post on “Graduating from Inbound Marketing High school.”

One of the easiest ways to create inbound links is to…  do it yourself.  How? Here are five simple steps to start increasing your web site’s effectiveness:

1. Find other thought leaders in your preferred field (marketing, branding, cooking, whatever…).  This is easy to do if you search your preferred topic through Google Blogs or social media bookmarking tools like StumbleUpon.
2. Review and evaluate, looking for high-ranking, relevant blogs and Web sites.  Many sites will be basic aggregation of content.  Be very perspicacious and find the blogs/sites that provide the most optimal content and ranking to follow.
3. Bookmark and/or subscribe to the RSS feeds for these blogs.
4. Track and act upon blog posts that you can add value to by posting a comment. Make sure your comment is succinct and intelligent, using key words and phrases pertaining to your field of expertise.
   
5. DO NOT SPAM! Most (aware) blog administrators will blacklist you if you start posting comments irrelevant to their blog or have an ungodly amount of links within your comment. If you’re transparent and add value with your comments, and don’t overtly push links to your site; the click-through rate will start jumping.

And there you have it.  You have an inbound link to your site! Rinse and repeat… Simple.

Here’s a bonus.

That blog comment will also be indexed when Google crawls that Web site. So, when someone searches on your name, your Web site, or blog, they will see your comment as part of their Google return.  Brilliant!

Leaving comments on other blogs is a daily ritual for me.  At first it was simply to be social (it IS social media, you know), but as I discovered it’s value as a SEO/marketing strategy, I made sure to comment on other blogs, adding value (and backlinks) as often as possible.

I learn the most from other blogs and friends throughout the “interweb.” As I continue to post, comment, track and act, my foundation as a marketing and branding thought leader is building. It takes time, but trust me, being social pays off.

Food for thought…

Keep Cooking (strategic reciprocal value)!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

I LOVE social media.  It’s the wild west in cyberspace. Not only can I post anything I want on this blog, my Facebook account, my Twitter account(s) or any number of other outlets (look to the right) I subscribe to; but I can search and monitor (virtually) anything anyone else is saying, tweeting, video-taping, etc. as well – and all while talking to others through the same venues about what I’m seeing, reading, experiencing…  (you get the idea).

Now, THAT’s truly social.

Seeing my adoration of social media, a friend of mine posted this article from The Eastern Echo on my Facebook wall.  I assume she did it to rib me a little for what looks like backlash against social media outlets like Facebook, MySpace and especially Twitter for not having more robust security options. But the writer of The Echo brings up some pretty solid points.

The Echo writes:

…like any responsible organization, Facebook finally updated its privacy settings a few years ago after users encountered plenty of embarrassing situations. You can now control which of your friends are able to see those great pictures of you passed out on the bathroom floor with genitals scrawled on your face.

But the truth is, Big Brother isn’t watching anymore, he’s tweeting.
Twitter, too, has security options that can allow users to select who can see their tweets. Unfortunately, people just don’t seem to know about them — or even worse, they don’t care.

They go on to say:

So should we all delete our Twitter accounts?

In my opinion, that would be the easy way out. …

But we can’t continue blaming every new social networking site for our blatant misuse of its technology. The answer isn’t to stop using the Internet, it’s to start using it more responsibly.

And parents? Don’t blame the Internet every time your kid is caught sending naked pictures of themselves to their friends. It’s not Twitter, it’s you.

Sweeeeeet!

So, here’s my take (as written on The Eastern Echo’s article post):

It’s not Facebook’s, MySpace’s, or Twitter’s fault that the “victims” of such horrible, depraved mismanagement of mental scruples are eventually caught.  Social media is exactly that…  SOCIAL.  If you stand up at your next cocktail party and announce that you’re getting breast implants… well…  it’s out there and the repercussions are yours to deal with.  Similarly, you can’t charge Twitter (et al) with keeping idiots form incriminating themselves or filtering content to our children.

It’s simply a matter of ethics. How long has it been since an Ethics 101 course was over-booked?  Can we blame parenting?  Sure, but don’t forget all of the lackadaisical marketing executives, most media outlets and virtually all of Hollywood.

The future of communication is going to be driven through social media. Heck, I even found this article through a friend of mine on Facebook.  So, technically, it’s my responsibility, as a marketer and as a role model for following generations to participate in social media with ethical, reasonable candor.  It’s my responsibility to educate and to foster those values.

Long lost are the days of plopping the kids in front of the boob-tube and call it babysitting.  Because the boob-tube has been replaced with YouTube and we KNOW what can be found there.

There are a lot of unethical, unreasonable people out there.  There always has been.  But we can’t expect the social media developers to protect us.  That’s our job.

Posted and disseminated…

Food for thought.

Keep Cooking (reasonably ethical conversations?)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

What’s your passion?  Is it your job?  Do you paint?  Play an instrument?  Are you lucky enough to get paid to do what you love?

That’s okay…  I don’t either.

In college, I thought I was going to be the next superstar cartoonist – the next Berkeley Breathead, Bill Watterson, or even the freakishly odd Gary Larson or Robert Crumb.

In retrospect, I had a good start. I had a small following for my cartoons – mostly girlfriends and fraternity brothers; but the word was starting to spread.  Their parents were requesting copies of my panels.  Some (of the less offensive) panels were being reviewed by King Syndication.  I even had a professor from The University of Iowa contact me asking if he could put one of my panels onto the last page of his biology mid-term as a “stress-reliever”  for his students. Nice!

For a brief period in 1991, I was living the dream…

Then, I started listening to people.  I took suggestions (gasp). I “commoditized” my art – my passion.  I kowtowed to the masses. I stopped being creative.  I stopped trying to surprise.  It stopped being fun.

So, I stopped cartooning… I put down my pen and refused to do another silly panel.  I always intended to start it up again, but one thing led to another and, well, we’ve all heard it before.

Then, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this post from Brand Autopsy.  I immediately re-posted my thoughts on their video as well as ordered the book, “Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys To Creativity“ by Hugh MacLeod.  I devoured the book in about 10 lunches (about the only time I get to read these days), all the time, Hugh was making me think back on my “more creative” days.

Hugh is bizarre, sarcastic, brilliant and pragmatic all at once.  His blog, gapingvoid.com, was an outlet for his passion – drawing cartoons on the back of business cards – which was quite unique in itself.  But then you add his view on corporate nonsense, marketing, social media, social networking, communication and dating, and it becomes hilariously addictive. He took his blog, the wisest and wise-ass-est of it, and made it into a perfect, creative self-help manual… just for me.

If you have a passion, a dream that you want to or wanted to pursue, “Ignore Everybody…” is a great place to start.  It succinctly provides a “how-to” on fostering the creative inspiration that led Hugh MacLeod to create gapingvoid.com and turn his professional  and personal world upside-down - in a good way…  It’s kind of a Cinderella story, but Hugh gives great reason and forethought to his success.

Here’s a little nugget that really got me thinking about my own passion:

Chapter 10: Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven.  But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snowline, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

So, after reading the book, I put it down and immediately registered two new domains that will hold my past and future cartoons, illustrations, and musings.

Will I “make it big” like MacLeod?  Who’s to say?  But I’ll start by ignoring everybody…  and listening to my passion.

What’s your passion?  Painting? Accounting? Pan flute? Are you doing it right now?

Keep Cooking! (your own brand of passion)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef