Social Media Content Marketing

I make it a point to lead a relatively stress-free life, but for some reason I've managed to squeeze a couple year's worth of stress into the past month. Illness, family illness, dog illness, moving with no place to move to, job relocation, and perhaps the greatest opportunity of my lifetime all at the same time. I'm sure I'm missing a few more but my head is spinning and that will have to do for now. But despite being miles up the creek with no paddle or land in sight, I am handling it all quite nicely but what I am most proud of is that I just realized today that Thursday is Valentine's Day. Being in love was always something I put a lot of effort into -- too much if you ask my friends. I love being in love and am a hopeless romantic by anybody's standards. But I've made it such a priority in my life that I've forsaken so much else.  Consequently, Valentine's Day each year has been a cause of so much worry and unhappiness for me over the ye...

This hasn't been a good week for JetBlue shareholders and some of it's passengers. Rather than provide the extra leg room based upon something as ridiculous as excess height, JetBlue now charges for exit rows, calling them premium seats – most of which are mid-cabin, mind you. So after the Captain had turned off the seat belt sign I slipped into the “Even More Space” row as they call it. Within seconds, I was pounced upon by the flight attendants, informing me that if I wanted to sit in one of these empty seats I would have to pay an additional $45 for the non-first class seat. Could this the new backlash policy for what happened earlier in the week on a cross-country JetBlue New York JFK-San Diego flight that was diverted to Denver, after a passenger became unruly because a flier moved to a seat next to her paid less for the seat? The woman apparently became agitated when a man who had been seated in the normal, less-expensive area was moved next to her becau...

Evidently I'm not the only one who was disappointed by the iPhone 5. Last year, I gave my view on why this faithful Mac user wasn't buying the iPhone 5 then or in the foreseeable future. This week, the company said it shipped 47.8 million iPhone's, a quarterly record for Apple that nonetheless disappointed many analysts accustomed to years of dominance in the smartphone industry. Wall Street was predicting more. No, it wanted gobs, and gobs more. I'd say how much more but each time I go to write this article it drops again. Now, Apple is no longer the most valuable company in the world. My problem with the iPhone was that customization was almost non-existent. That's something Microsoft customers have readily accepted over the years, but for us Mac loyalists, that kind of stuff just won't fly. But it was so darn cool and well made that Apple could do just that as the iPhone was clearly the best cell phone on the market. But then something happ...

It seems everyone I've spoken with this season has experienced a mega cold this New Year. If you haven't gotten yours, don't worry it probably got lost in the holiday mail but I'm sure it's on its way. I haven't had a cold in a few years but I wasn't so lucky a few weeks ago as I'm just getting over one that lasted a whopping three weeks — lasting this long mostly because of my air travel from New York to Florida which the airlines might as well rename the Influenza Express. Having a Holiday cold isn't usually worrisome but it is almost always rather annoying. Like the visiting in-laws, you know it's going to leave soon but that doesn't make it less miserable or easier to put up with. But when a cold lasts weeks instead of days it can bring down both your defenses and your spirit. It's times like these that you can use words of encouragement and I found mine in the most unlikely of places: wrapped around my cough drops....

My Google home page looks significantly different than yours does today. When you signed in,  you saw the standard Google logo. When I did, I was greeted with something quite different. No, I didn't customize it -- Google did it's own customization for me. You see it's my birthday today and Google customized it's home page logo with a new birthday logo for me (OK for everyone celebrating a birthday today). Rather than the red, blue and yellow Google font, I'm looking at cakes, pies, torts, all adorned with icing and lit candles shaped into the Google logo. My own Google Birthday doodle. There aren't many benefits of having the first workday of the year as a birthday. Scratch that. There are no benefits. None. Zero. The world's biggest party leaves everyone with the same New Year's resolution: no more partying. Not to mention if people somehow do remember it chances are your gift will be a regift and most assuredly wrapped in Christmas paper. So tr...

When the ball dropped in Times Square at the stroke of midnight, so did the axe on love relationships around the world. Though two years ago an ex girlfriend chose December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day) to "drop the bomb" on me (more appropriately I suppose,) New Year's Eve remains the leader of National Get Dumped Day around the world. It's obvious why. People want to start the New Year fresh and unencumbered. My best friend is making it a bit of a tradition dumping a boyfriend on the last two New Year's Eve. Not surprisingly, the first post I saw as I signed onto Facebook while drinking my morning coffee was a friend in Asia who just went from "in a relationship" to "single." And by the time I finished the sip another from France messaged me the same on chat. She couldn't decide between the two men in her life so instead dumped them both. Ironically rather than sadness, I feel envious. Almost to the point where I feel like p...

There's a new list out this week that ranks the most popular celebrities on social media based on fans and followers on the largest social networks with Justin Bieber edging out Lady Gaga for the top spot.  And we're talking about millions of followers and billions of page views. (Insert your own Mayan Calendar joke here.) The real lesson here for those of us over the age of 13 is that if you're promoting a company or brand on Facebook and Twitter you're probably envious, frustrated and wasting your time on the wrong things. Pop stars in fact dominate social media holding eight of the Top 10 spots most with 30 million plus Facebook fans and Twitter followers. And that's because they are using the medium the way it was designed.  Though I am the father of a teenager who has hundreds of teenage friends, I have yet to meet a Justin Bieber fan — but he seems like a nice kid and see no reason to begrudge him. His handlers know who his targ...

The precise moment I pulled up to the gas pump this morning, my car chimed and the "Need Fuel" icon light came on. I thought about how great it would be if I could achieve similar perfect timing with my social media to maximize results and reach. To have posts, emails, texts, them appear precisely at the moment they are needed or desired. One of the first things I learned about being a social media professional was that before you spend time on the metrics of perfect timing, it's better to spend more time tweeting and Facebook posting more often. The number one reason social media campaigns fail in my opinion is because businesses get discouraged by a lack of results and stop posting. Or they run out of ideas. Or they just don't keep up with a regular schedule. Instead, first think about your intent. Why do you want your posts to be read? What are your expected results? Is it just to be retweeted or reposted? That's good for the ego but doesn't much hel...

When I ask for a glass of water in a restaurant now it invariably comes with a wedge of lemon. When and why did this become the norm? Was this the idea of the Lemon Council? There is a Lemon Council, right? There must be as there are lobbyists for everything now. Did their sour, puckered lips sweet talk every eating and drinking establishment in country with promised tax loopholes? Or maybe its a Lemon Consortium that strong arms bars to "add a slice if theys knows what's good for 'em." I'm thinking they are just taking their lead from news organizations. News organizations all flavor their news. That goes for whether whether they are online, on air, or on Death Row (the medium formally known as "Print".) Rather than scouring the Internet looking for news I find myself scouring the news looking for unfiltered versions. Most have an overtly political bent, others focus on technology, or sensationalism. It annoys me to no end that I have to go ou...

  A new social media website wants to encourage us to  follow the advice of our friends instead of complete strangers . With perpetual skepticism, sarcasm approaching warning levels, and being named yet again to  People Magazine 's "Sexiest Curmudgeon of the Year" list, I've somehow accumulated more friends than I really should have. (O.K. so I  may  have substituted the word "messiest" with "sexiest"   in the previous sentence.) And some of my best friends are strangers I have only corresponded with through social media; ones I have never met and not likely I ever will. If you think about it, you didn't really  choose the friends you saw this weekend. More likely, they're your neighbors, your family, work associates, fellow students who sat next to you in Algebra class, or the parents of the other kids on our kid's team. We "promote" these people to friendship status due to their close proximity to our lives, their ti...

Social media and relationships: that's what the new Facebook couples pages is all about. Listing yourself as "In a relationship" is so traumatic that it's probably ended more relationships than Vegas trips and Victoria's Secrets catalogs combined. But now, a page to illustrate the relationship?  ( For more information on this please see "Kiss of Death" .)  Instead let's discuss the business/customer social media "marriage." First, if you believe the adage "Marriage is a two-way street" then I might have due cause to suspend your relationship license.  Or maybe you've never walked down the plank, er I mean, aisle. Marriages — even the most successful ones  — are more often than not comprised of a giver and a taker. And the social media business relationship is no different except the business is always the giver and your customer is always the taker. As the reader/follower/customer, I want, want, want. I don...

Did you see what I did there? I front-loaded the headline with tried and true triggers to make even the most skeptical reader to click and open. Like you just did. Marketers have known for years that people respond to sentiments that imply easy, free, expert or quantitative points. But social media is upping the ante. We live in a 140 character world that will keep getting shortened until mind reading is a downloadable smart phone app. The bad news is that my Magic 8-Ball says "Chances are good" that several people who will repost this very article will do so without ever reading it. And therein lies one of the most prevalent problems that social media for business is facing today. There is such a frenzy by businesses to share post, re-post, tweet and retweet that few stop to read what they share or know why they're sharing it. Often it's rehashed info we just read --and those are the good posts. More often articles are a few paragraphs seasoned wi...

Please stand back. I'm about to adminster social media expertise. Social media content writing is not rocket science -- it's far more difficult. And it shouldn't be attempted by non-experts or someone may lose and eye. Or that's what "social media experts" will tell you. And they'll also tell you that they're social media experts right from the get go. Social media is just public relations, advertising, sales and marketing packaged into bite-sized pieces. So whoever handles those functions should be the same people who handle your social networking.I spend much of my day involved with social media and have for about three years now. I create strategies, write content, link efforts over various social networks, monitor and track mentions, identify influencers, and so on. The industry is still forming and changing so we are all perpetual students. The problem is social media hasn't been around long enough to create experts. Seasoned commun...

I am not a Presidential candidate, nor do I play one on TV. My patriotic duty, if I choose to exercise it, will be to select a candidate in a few days who I believe will protect and foster my country's best interests. I am well-educated, worldly, open-minded, unaffiliated with a political party, and a chasm away from the 1% or the 47%. I routinely make complex decisions and have no issue moral or otherwise committing my support to one candidate. And I am by no means alone. Like in many past elections, rather than selecting the best candidate for the position from thousands of qualified men and women, I find myself once again facing the much more difficult task of having to select the best (or least worst?) of two. No television commercial, email blast, tweet, or social media onslaught can help them now. I'm too demoralized and campaign-weary. I apologize to those who have championed a cause but I do not accept rhetoric, statistics, or unsubstantiated claims of ...

This week will see the release of the Microsoft Surface tablet and Windows 8 operating software that supports touch screen. To me, it's the technology equivalent to an 80's hair band releasing a new album. Does anyone really care at this point? Evidently, yes. Early reviews have been  glowing and the company reports sold out pre-orders in the first day . Regardless, it will surely be a tough road ahead for Microsoft fighting to gain a foothold in this new tablet market. Its Internet Explorer by most accounts continues to lose market share in the web browser arena to Chrome and Firefox, and it's playing catch up to Android and iOS on cell phone operating software. Microsoft Office still dominates business offices but Google Docs is free. Here's a phrase I thought I'd never say: I feel a little sorry for Microsoft. You see, Apple is expected to release its new iPad mini this week. Apple is the technology media darling and can do no wr...