Gatorade’s Recent Commercial/Campaign
ESPN has historically aired some of the greatest commercials to date. Not only are their own commercial hysterical(go to youtube.com and search “SportsCenter commercials” or click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvdOtYOjRY ), but the ads that companies/brands air on the channel are great as well. On numerous occasions I’ve caught myself rewinding some of the spots, sometimes more than once. Obviously these commercials are targeted towards men in their late teens to early 40’s, which I happen to fall into, and so they appeal to me. One of those rewind moments happened Sunday! If you haven’t seen Gatorade’s new commercial to promote its limited-edition Michael Jordan bottles, you are truly missing out. I actually got chills from it. Maybe its b/c I was born in Chicago and love that city, or maybe because MJ is my favorite athlete of all time, but this commercial made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Just watch for yourself… http://www.mediapost.com/media/?f=GatoradeMJStreetArt.mov The mosaic of Jordan slam-dunking a basketball(which he did often), was built in Chicago out of 14,641 Gatorade bottles, and actually took 16 hours to erect. Jordan will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in September.
Dipping the Toe in Social Media(with Twitter)….part 2
FOR BUSINESS: Now that I’ve given a brief overview of setting up a Twitter account for personal use, it’s time to move on to for business use(which most of you are probably more concerned about). Flying through the creation of your account….use your real name for name, and use your business name as the Username. Be sure to put your company Website in the URL section(if you don’t have a Web presence, WHY?? But at the same time you don’t want to just throw up some cheap site that looks like, well throw up!) Of course in the bio section you want to include what your business does, but be personable about it and DON’T MAKE IT A DIRECT SALES PITCH!! For the most part people do not like to be broadcasted to, and that’s completely the opposite of what Twitter and Social Media is all about. Remember, its about engagement and relationship building! For your profile picture, USE A PICTURE OF YOURSELF!! DO NOT PUT UP YOUR COMPANY LOGO! I am not following your brand, I’m following you! I don’t want to have a relationship with your brand, I want to have a relationship with you! NOTE: in my opinion, the BEST approach is to put up a picture of you doing your job! If you’re a lawyer, put up a picture of you in the heat of the moment(not sure if cameras are allowed in courtrooms though), or if you’re a pool man, put a picture of you cleaning a pool(a nice one, not a kiddie one), and if you’re a plumber, put a picture of you……ah,ah,ah, holding a plunger!
Now that you’re all set up and ready to go, its time to get rocking and rolling. Right away, the first thing to do is Tweet something along the lines of “Hi everyone, finally decided to join the fun. Look forward to “meeting” everyone.” The reason for putting this up is so when people go to follow you back, there isn’t just a blank wall. That is an instant no-follow for me! Once you’ve done that its time to find people to follow(in hopes that they follow you back.) With business, I think the best place to start is with www.tweepz.com so you can search people bios, most importantly their location. For most SMB, this is where your target market is going to live. If its not, well search the places that they do live! Next, go to www.twellow.com and start searching for people who are in your industry. Lawyers, search lawyers, actors search actors(and directors, photographers, and anyone in your industry), and plumbers search plumbers. You not only can you maybe learn some new things and possibly get some inside scoop, but you can piggy back off of who they’re following and who’s following them! Remember, its important to click on peoples bios before following them. If you’re a lawyer that lives in Florida, and you run into a stripper in Seattle, I probably wouldn’t follow them. Now that I mention it, you might want to since she has apparent connections to a lawyer, and might know a stripper in Florida who needs a lawyer (not to toot my own horn, but I love my examples sometimes!) Moral of the story is “Just use your best judgment and don’t follow strippers!”
And on that note I think I’ll end this post. I’ve obviously turned delusional. If you still have questions after these posts, please just ask. I promise to gradually get more advanced in utilizing Twitter with future post.
Dipping Your Toe in Social Media(with Twitter)…part 1
Warning: if you already have a Twitter account, DO NOT read this….you will hate me!”
The best place for anyone to get started in the Social Media space is with Twitter. “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers(Wikipedia).” It actually began as a side project by Jack Dorsey(starring Evan Williams and Biz Stone) in late 2006, and has now exploded into one of the most popular and well known Web-sites out there today. But since this isn’t a research paper, I’ll stop answering “What is Twitter?”
The more important question is “How do I use Twitter?” I’ll focus mainly on applying it to your Small-Medium size business, aka SMB(Part 2), but will start out about using it for personal use as well. To be honest, it might be best to start out using it for personal reasons and learn from trial and error that way. It’s much better to lose a follower, than to lose a follower/lead(someone who will give you $). The first thing to do is obviously go to www.twitter.com, and then click on the big green “SIGN UP NOW” box. There are three important pieces here: 1) choose a screen name that includes your name, or at least something you like(i.e. Timmy123, DogLuva, GolfNut, etc) 2) make your bio as close to the truth as possible(without you feeling uncomfortable) 3) put an picture of yourself(or you and your dog/car). This will show other people that you are an actual human being who they can trust and connect with. After completing a simple registration process, it’s time for the fun to begin!
Now that you’ve finally registered, it’s time to find some FOLLOWERs, or likeminded individuals/people that share the same interest with you. This will be helpful with both you’re personal and business accounts(which I recommend to have separately….I’ll explain later), but remember….we are starting with personal use here! Before you start following everyone feasible, the first thing to do is Tweet something along the lines of “Hi everyone, finally decided to join the fun. Look forward to “meeting” everyone.” The reason for putting this up is so when people go to follow you back, there isn’t just a blank wall. That is an instant no-follow for me!
Back to finding likeminded Twitterers…the easiest way of doing this and a good starting point is utilizing Twitter’s internal search “Twitter Search.”(obvious name) This isn’t necessarily the best way to find people(it only searches User/Real names…remember DogLuva), but without getting to techy(not a word), it’s the easiest. Start by typing in key words like, dog, wag, paw, bark, perro, pooch, etc and click “FOLLOW” by whatever names you choose. I would go with “the more the merrier” theme though. You are then able to go back to your home page(click HOME tab at the top) and click on each of these new people that you are “FOLLOWING.” Now there is a really good chance that your new FOLLOWINGs and FOLLOWING(ok, enough CAPS) people who you might find interesting, so check out who they’re following. Fly down the row and follow all of the people who seem interesting to you. If you want, you can even click on their user name to check out their bio before committing to the “serious relationship”(jk). Ok, Im starting to notice I use “” and ( ) and CAPS a lot. That’s probably why I always got C’s in English class!
You’re off to a good start! Once you’ve followed, followers, following, following, followers, repeating; the next step is to use a third party(not you “1”, and not Twitter “2”) system that expands search. There are more than a dozen out there but two that I will note are www.twellow.com and www.tweepz.com. Twellow allows you to search terms like Arts/Music and find people that way. Their database is pretty extensive with Twitter users so there’s a good chance you can pick up a few hundred new “Twitts”(one of the nicknames for Twitter users.) And then again, follower their followers and their followers and their followers. Be a little more strategic and click on their bios to make sure its someone youre interested in before Following. Get the point? Tweepz on the other hand does a search on the Twitter users’ bio. This is really good for finding people in your location(i.e. Miami, South Florida, Florida, Southwest). With locational(made up that word) search, again, you don’t want to automatically follow their followers, followers, followers, because they might not all live in Miami and/or like dogs.
Once you start getting a hang of it, you can start to follow famous people like actors, sports stars, musicians, politicians, etc. Do this on your personal account. You probably dont want people who are following you on your business account to see you following Hugh Hefner and all his Playboy Bunnies(there are A LOT on there).
I tried to be brief, but if you have any questions or want me to clarify, just ask! Part 2 is Twitter for SMB’s!!
Its Official…Social Media has taken over my TV!!
Ive officially succumbed to the fact that Social Media has taken over the masses. In the past week alone, I have seen 5 instances/references to SoMe on main stream television(disclaimer: I like t.v.) The two best instance that are worth noting are 1) Sports Centers “Twitter of the Day” 2) during Sunday’s Season Finale of Million Dollar PassWord.
My favorite show hands down, ESPN’s(@espn) SportsCenter(@sportscenter) has introduced a piece called “Twitter of the Day.” The first one that I witnessed was a Tweet from Andy Roddick(@andyroddick…which is a verified account.)
Next, I just watched the newly enhanced Million Dollar Password hosted by my boy Regis Philbin. The original Password ran from (1961-1967; 1971-1975) and was hosted by Allen Ludden…guy kind of freaked me out a bit. From that spun off Super Password and Password Plus. Ok, who cares, back to my point. That night’s guest stars were Julie Chen and Phil Keoghan(who the hell are these clowns?). Hopefully you’ve seen the show so you can understand this….the word was “MASK”. The lady giving the one-word clue said “FACE”(which makes perfect sense), and her partner came back with “BOOK!” Seriously??Did that just happen?? Facebook is so embedded in this guys head that that was the first thing to pop. Here’s a recap of that night brought to you by CBS. Million Dollar Password
Why Social Media?….Why Not??
Why Social Media? Actually the real question should be…Why not Social Media? I’m sorry to break the news to some folks, but Social Media is here to stay. In fact, I’ll go out on limb and say that its going to outlive each and every one of us! Social media has taken over our lives like the Swine Flu took over the airwaves last month(too soon?), and corporations are trying to catch up/figure out how to capitalize on it. The mere notion of connecting with customers, clients, partners, etc. via the Web was foreign to most people and organizations, but now it’s a way of life. After all, the Internet is a big, scary, and unsecure place! And I guess there’s some truth to that, but I promise we’ll make it through together!
First off, I cant think of anything better for a small to medium size business in a recession other than SoMe. Why, because it’s free!! You can go out on the World Wide Web right now(actually, after reading this…important!) and start a Social Media campaign with no credit cards, checks, or cash in sight. I don’t recommend this approach, but I needed to prove my point. The only cost associated with SoMe is time. I’ll tell you right now that in order to do this right and add value to your organization; this is going to take time. There’s no math equation to this, but its going to take quality hours to roll this out and keep it up and running EFFECTIVELY.
Secondly, SoMe is interactive! Would you rather listen to a lecture all day, or engage in a discussion? You back row people need not reply! Think about this…There’s a really good chance that someone somewhere is talking about your product or service. Wouldn’t you like to be apart of that conversation? Wouldn’t you like to engage with those people? If you answered yes, continue on….if you answered no, go to www.bankruptcy.com (meant to be a joke, but I just found out that it’s a real site.) Old school marketing was one way messaging. Think billboards, t.v. commercials, and radio ads. New school marketing is a two way street. Information is flowing back-n-forth, back-n-forth, back-n-forth. Think Pong for Atari. Try to imagine that every time the ball touches the paddle, it picks up a new piece of information. That’s Social Media!
Next, another benefit of SoMe is that its immediate! SoMe allows a single entity to send out a piece of information(photos, videos, audios, and documents) to a group at the click of a button! A lot can be said about the timely manner these interactions happen. I always hear the saying “time is money”, and it seems fitting when talking about SoMe. There’s a great deal of value in being able to relay a message that quickly.
Over time, you develop relationships with individuals who now trust you, who are interested in you, care about you, and see you as more than an acquaintance. You may have the same interest, values, beliefs, etc. as them, and both parties are genuinely open to receiving information from one another. Now take that relationship and put it on the Web. It’s not necessarily just about the messages, it’s not just about the tools, it’s about the relationships! If you approach SoMe with this mindset, you’re leaps and bounds ahead of most.
And so it Begins….
So I’ve been thinking about how to strategically roll out a blog series over the coming weeks. One that will hopefully add value to other’s lives. The thing that kept coming up and where I feel my expertise lies is talking about rolling out a social media strategy…a simple phased approach. This has never been blogged about, and is a completely new subject matter! No really, I swear! Ok, so I lied(and now we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.) A lot of what I’ve read around this topic (some good, some bad) are too high level for people new to this space. If my dad read one of these, his head would probably explode.
Over the next couple weeks, I’m going to cover “A Meathead’s Guide to a Social Media Strategy.” This will primarily be targeted to small to medium size businesses that don’t have the resources available for a full blown Social Media campaign. I absolutely love talking about implementing campaigns for organizations with deep pockets, but we’ll save the good stuff for later! The idea is to roll out a phased approach and discuss each piece or tool in greater detail. Not only creating new networks for your business, but leveraging the ones you already have. It’s all about being smack-dab in the middle of these networks!!
The goal is to hopefully ensure that people understand not only the “How,” but also the “Why.” And there’s a HUGE difference there! The Web is full of fun/awesome/cool/cute little Web 2.0 tools, but it’s in the way that you use them that makes them so powerful and effective. My buddy Brad Dohack and his colleague Ray Higdon recently developed an online tutorial, which will most likely supplement my initial blog series, called “33 Days to Online Domination” (www.33daystosuccess.com). If that title doesn’t get your heart pumping, I don’t know what will. They’ve used a similar concept.
The topics to be covered will be: How to Utilize Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Groups, and other Social Networking sites(not necessarily MySpace.com, but more along the lines of things like t2t.com). As always I welcome your feedback(compliments and respectful disagreements….but mostly compliments)
Its a Social World out there…
Welcome to The Social World! This site will mostly be dedicated to social media(shocking I know), but will also produce what I like to call “blogs of randomness.” This is how my brain works….90mph! This will probably include things that frequent my World (like food, wine, sports, golf, current events, people) in an attempt to prove I’m not just a robot.
Enjoy,Wes
