Saturday, September 10, 2011

Myrtle Beach Marketing Scorecard for Myrtle Beach Businesses

Myrtle Beach Marketing Scorecard for Myrtle Beach Businesses (by bizbuzzmediavideo)

What is your businesses online reputation score. Do you know how well or poorly you compare to your competitor(s)

Want to find out where you stand? Or are you just waiting to see what happens?

If you want to get ahead of your competitor go to our website at http://bizbuzzmedia.net and get your complimentary scorecard analysis of your business.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Handyman Myrtle Beach Tips - Painting - Clogged Drains


Handyman Myrtle Beach Tips




 

 

 

 

 

 

[important]Painting, Cleaning Drains. Handyman Myrtle Beach Tips[/important]


Do you want to freshen up the look of your home by painting inside or outside your Myrtle Beach area home. Handyman Myrtle Beach has some tips. Interior/exterior home painting is a simple way for you to change your home into something special using proper prep plus some coats of fresh paint. Handyman Myrtle Beach home painting is one of those home improvement projects that a homeowner can do if they are willing to do the work. Myrtle Beach Handyman guide team definitely recommends you consider the work required and if ladders are required.

Preparation tips | Exterior Painting Myrtle Beach | Interior PaintingMyrtle beach Handyman, handyman myrtle beach, painter myrtle beach, home repair myrtle beach, remodeling myrtle beach


Interior Preparation: A handy-man hint to your typical home owner might be, to move all the furniture and your valuables into the center of the room (or out of the room) and cover it with plastic. Use a drop cloth every where you will be working. Next wash the walls using a moist wash rag or sponge and let it dry. Sometimes for kitchen or other walls that have grease or dirt you may want to use a mild cleaner like TSP to make the cleaning easier and more effective. Check the walls and areas for holes cracks and dents and fill these level with plaster/ drywall mud to create a smooth even surface. Finally we recommend a light sand to the surface.

Exterior Preparation: Use a power washer if you are confident that you won't damage the surface or get water into areas that must stay dry. It is also hard work. Another option is to use elbow grease, scrub brush, cloth and a garden hose to rinse away the area. This means washing the surface of any mildew and mold using bleach, scraping all loose paint away, feather sand the paint edges and fixing every crack around the windows. Myrtle Beach Handyman tip: Hire someone if in doubt. To do this fix, utilize either caulk or another sealing compound. Finally prime any bare areas. Doing this kind of standard prep will guarantee that this fresh paint has a even sticky surface to bond to plus the paint job will last through a number of years. If you don't, the paint will certainly peel off since the area wasn't well prepared.

[important]Applying Coats of Paint - Key handyman Myrtle Beach Tip.[/important]


Apply one or two coats of quality paint (we recommend two coats) and you should adhere to the manufacturer's guidelines pertaining to the length of time the actual fresh paint will need to dry before you apply another layer of fresh paint.


Bonus Handyman Tip – Cleaning Household Drains


Take out the drain plus clear every solid substances and / or unwanted hair using your hands and fingers. Even though this is a filthy task, it'll usually repair the issue then and there. Suppose the particular drain is your kitchen drain, which happens to be blocked with food items and other messy stuff, then you definitely need to try a plunger several times to find out if you are able to unblock your drain. Regarding shower and bathtub blockages, a good handmade "drain snake" can be made from a hanger. Basically untwist a coat-hanger into a stretched out wire, along with twisting the end to a really short hook using a set of pliers. Plunge your handmade hanger into your drain till all of the unwanted hair is taken away. That should do it.

Home Maintenance and house repairs are often a lot of work and can also be rewarding personally for those that want to do the work themselves. If you decide you want help be careful when hiring a Myrtle Beach handyman. See Article of Interest below titles "Handyman Myrtle Beach | How to Hire a Handyman to find a solution to hiring a handyman Myrtle Beach.




 

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Local Business Marketing | Google Places

5.2 Billion vs 1.8 Billion Users?

Targeted to your local business.

What is it?

The combination of Local and mobile marketing. Paces like Google Places, Foursquare and Mobile and Text marketing.

Below is an ad I created to show you an example. Here is the direct link so you can see it either on your computer or on your mobile phone.
http://budurl.com/FreeLocalMktgReview

Let me see the local mobile marketing ad

If you have any questions please send them to theteam@bizbuzzmedia.net or text them to 704-350-5226

Pierre Rattini, Biz Buzz Media

http://bizbuzzmedia.net
"Get Me The Info"
Amplify’d from maps.google.com
1551 Spinnaker Drive, Unit #5922, North Myrtle Beach, SC 29582, USA
(704) 350-5226


Biz Buzz Media

Local Marketing Analysis Free!
Google Places | Mobile Marketing. Your business serves local clients or vacationers.
Search is now local and mobile.
Will customers find you or your competitors?
For your complimentary local, mobile review!
Text "FreeLocal" to 704-350-5226 (or call)
Code - Local0430
Expires - Apr 30, 2011
Search for offers near you with the Offers iGoogle gadget
Add to Google
New!

See more at maps.google.com

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

3 Reasons Nonprofits need a facebook page not a profile

I have been asked this question a lot. Here is an article that answers the question of Facebook Page or Facebook Profile very simply, in my opinion.

If you have further questions please ask we want to give back where we can.

Pierre Rattini, Biz Buzz Media, CMO, CCO
Social Media Marketing Consultant, Myrtle Beach SC
http://www.bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.socialbrite.org
Sociabrite


Why you want to create a Facebook Page, not a Profile, for your nonprofit

John HaydonI’ve been chatting with Will Coley lately about nonprofits that violate Facebook’s Terms of Service, sometimes knowingly, by using a Profile to market their cause rather than a Page.
Using a Facebook Profile to market your nonprofit on Facebook is not smart, for at least three reasons:

You have no way of knowing what people want

1Facebook gives marketers a powerful tool called Insights that allows you to see – on a post level – how your fans engage with your content. Profiles don’t have this tool, only Pages do.
Facebook users don’t analyze how their friends react to their status updates. But marketers care very much about this – and so should you.

People don’t want to be your friend

2A friend request is very different from asking someone to like your Page. If you’re sending friend requests as a Profile, you’re asking the user to allow you to see their photos, their friends list, their address, their phone number and perhaps their relationship status.
Gross.
Facebook users don’t want to share this info with your organization. Asking a user to like your Page, on the other hand, doesn’t cross any personal boundary.

Facebook could delete your profile

3Using a Facebook profile to market your organization is a violation of Facebook’s rules.
What this means is that after spending a lot of resources of building up a large amount of friends – say, up to 5,000 – Facebook can simply delete the profile.

A visual map of your Facebook options

It’s likely that most nonprofits that go this route do so simply out of ignorance. The difference between a Profile and a Page is a topic covered in the Facebook Foundations webinar I conduct with CharityHowTo. Above is a map of all properties available on Facebook — Pages, Profiles, Places and Groups — on one slide. You can also download the PDF.
Why else is using a Profile bad business for nonprofits?
Read more at www.socialbrite.org

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How Non-Profits can take charge of Facebook news feeds

A must read if you are a non profit. Just Saying!

If you find this helpful or you have other tips to help other non profits please share them.

Pierre Rattini, CMO, CCO
BizBuzzMedia.net
Social Media Marketing Consultant
Amplify’d from www.socialbrite.org
Sociabrite


How nonprofits can take charge of Facebook’s news feeds

EdgeRank-Checker

New tool: The EdgeRank Checker app shows how well your Facebook Page is performing.

It’s the heart & soul of Facebook — and few people understand it

JD LasicaOver the years, Facebook has become a central part of our online social presence — for nonprofits, organizations and our personal brands.
So why do so many nonprofits and organizations know so little about how the heart and soul of Facebook actually works? I’m referring to the Facebook News Feed, featured in a Chevy Cruze commercial in the second quarter of yesterday’s Super Bowl.

In this series, we’ll offer tips on how to use Facebook much more effectively as a professional by taking charge of your News Feed. We’ll dissect Facebook’s secret sauce, called EdgeRank, to help you build authority with the right touch, tools and tactics. And we’ll give you tips on how to expand your organization’s reach and influence on Facebook.

How Facebook’s news feeds work

Facebook is far more than a social network: It’s also a personalized news network powered by a highly dynamic engine that’s personalized, relevant and timely. The crown jewel of this dynamic landscape is the News Feed. The News Feed consists of the content continually fed into the center column of your home page from people and Pages you follow on Facebook. You’ll see status updates, photos, photo tags, videos, friend requests, event RSVPs and group memberships.
Facebook’s news feeds have evolved significantly since the first one was introduced in 2006. With close to 600 million members, Facebook handles billions of individualized feeds — an impressive feat of engineering, if you to stop to think about it. Some members may not realize it, but the news stream you typically see on your page displays only a small portion of the updates posted by your Facebook friends.
A few weeks ago Facebook tweaked the Most Recent feed. Now you have the option to display photos, Page updates & posts on Friend Lists.
Your News Feed comes in two flavors:
Top News contains what Facebook calls “the most interesting content that your friends are posting.” This filtered feed is the default view on Facebook (until you change it), and Facebook said in late 2010 that more than 95 percent of its nearly 600 million members using the Web interface see the site through this prism. (This figure doesn’t count members using mobile apps and third-party apps.)
Most Recent shows you “all the actions your friends are making in real-time,” Facebook says (though that’s not literally true, as we’ll see below). On Dec. 22, with little fanfare, Facebook updated the Most Recent feed, giving you more filter options, including just photos, just updates from Pages, and posts from the Friend Lists you create. Pretty cool! Behold:
If you’d prefer to see Most Recent as your default, you can scroll down to the very bottom of your Top News or Most Recent page, click Edit Options, and select: Show posts from: All of your friends and pages. (See this Help page for more details.)
You can also choose to hide certain kinds of applications — if you hate quizzes, you can banish quiz apps from your feed — or you can hide posts from selected individuals or Pages. This can come in handy if you have a garrulous buddy you don’t want to defriend or a brand that you’ve changed your mind about. Roll over the X at the right of any post and you’ll see options, which are different for Pages and friends:
A few things to note about the Most Recent feed:
• If you use the Facebook for iPhone or Facebook for Android app, this is the feed you see — the Live Feed gusher, not the filtered Top News feed.
• Does your Most Recent feed contain absolutely all of your friends’ updates? Well, it probably contains 98 percent of them. At the Daily Beast, Tom Weber conducted an experiment and found that updates, links, photos and videos posted by a Facebook newcomer did not appear in some of his friends’ Most Recent feeds. And others have noticed that the Most Recent feed doesn’t contain a few of the updates you see in the unfiltered Live Feed on your mobile device or a third-party app using an API like TweetDeck or Hootsuite. Try it — it’s an interesting experiment!
• I should also mention that an update by a Facebook Group — as opposed to a Facebook Page or personal Profile — does not appear in either anyone’s Most Recent or Top News feeds. Groups may contact their members via in-box messaging up to a maximum of 5,000 members, which Pages cannot do. But today it’s almost always better for a brand to create a Page, rather than a Group, to maximize visibility within the News Feed.
You may also want to check the settings found by clicking on the “Edit Options” button of your Most Recent feed at the top or bottom of the page.

Fine-tuning your Top News feed

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. We don’t recommend turning your Top News into a Most Recent firehose. The idea behind Top News is this: You want to see news from the Facebook members, brands or causes that matter most to you. And we agree: You want to be selective about who to devote your attention to, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of friends and follow scores of Pages. Your time is valuable, right?
So you need to teach Facebook’s Top News feed how to behave. And you want to set up lists for more targeted updates, which we’ll cover in part 2.
What makes it into your Top News stream? Facebook uses a formula called EdgeRank, which takes into account just three factors:
  • Affinity: The more often you engage with content by a person or Page over time, the higher your affinity will be for that content creator.
  • Weight: As posts are commented on, liked and shared by other Facebook users and their networks, their overall weight increases, even if you’re not connected with those users. A posting with 10 comments and 15 Likes carries a greater weight than one with no comments or Likes. Not all interactions are equal. A comment probably counts more than a Like does.
  • Timeliness: The more recent the post, the higher it ranks. As time goes by, its value decreases.
Top News will show you hours-old updates from some friends while ignoring newer posts from others. You probably wonder which of your friends see which of your posts. It comes down to this: A high EdgeRank leads to visibility while a low EdgeRank leads to obscurity.

New tool: The EdgeRank Checker app

Last week social media strategist Mari Smith wrote about a new tool that measures your Facebook Page’s EdgeRank score. If you have a Facebook Page, EdgeRank Checker — pictured at top — steps you through the process of determining how effective your Page is in reaching your followers. No download necessary.
Here’s how it works. Just log in as an administrator, go to your Insights page and select the Page you want to check (image above). Choose a date range, click the Export button and be sure to tab over to select CSV (not Excel). Then upload the CSV file to EdgeRank Checker and it spits out your score in a few seconds. The resulting page will show what your score means. Facebook expert Chad Wittman, founder of social media management firm SBN, created the tool. There’s also a fan engagement checker at Fangager.com – enter your Page username to get a full summary (hat tip to Brian Solis).
The exact way EdgeRank works is part of Facebook’s secret sauce, but we’ll explore how to increase affinity and weight — that is, how to enhance your influence and visibility — in part 2 of this series.
Read more at www.socialbrite.org

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REPORT: Facebook Branding Beats Twitter

Did you see the other article on this subject http://ow.ly/3ThiQ



Why Facebook Matters to your business.



Pierre Rattini

CCO,CMO Biz Buzz Media

Social Media Marketing Consultant

Mobile Marketing, Lead Generation and Automated Follow up

Amplify’d from www.allfacebook.com

Facebook’s brand effectiveness outranks all other social media’s branding efforts, according Brand Keys’ Customer Loyalty Index.

The index measures customer engagement and loyalty among brands in 79 different categories, one of which is social networking sites. This category has enough surprises to make us wonder whether Brand Keys’ assessment used sufficiently sized survey samples.

Brand Keys ranks MySpace second, LinkedIn third, Flickr fourth and Twitter fifth. We’d expect to see Twitter and the old News Corp. site in each other’s places. Or maybe MySpace shouldn’t even be in the top five, as many other sites have stronger brands, including FourSquare, Quora, Tumblr, YouTube and Yelp, not neccessarily in that order.

The consultancy declares that its index can help a brand forecast customer loyalty and purchase patterns over a 12- to 18-month horizon; this confuses us further if it means that MySpace will continue to rank second for another year-and-a-half. We suppose that’s mitigated by the notion that Facebook would continue to rank first over this time.

Readers, what do you make of the Brand Keys assessment of branding in social media?

Read more at www.allfacebook.com
 

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Consumers Like Facebook's Brand | Twitter Not So Much

From the 15th edition of the consultant Brand Keys' annual Customer Loyalty Index.



What it important is coming up with a plan that best matches your Brand with the social media platforms that best match your audience.



Would like your help and feedback...



What business are you in and what social platform best matches it?

Amplify’d from www.mediapost.com
Consumers Like Facebook's Brand, Twitter Not So Much
Despite the concerns surrounding user privacy, Facebook has the most loyal and engaged consumers of any major online social media platform, according results of some highly regarded brand research being released today. The research, the 15th edition of consultant Brand Keys' annual Customer Loyalty Index, shows that on the basis of all consumer brand attributes, including "privacy and security," Facebook ranks a dominant No. 1, followed by MySpace, LinkedIn, and Flickr with micro blogging network Twitter a distant fifth.


"When you look at the diagnostics, Facebook does rank very low in terms of security and control," but when you put all the drivers together they have a very loyal base," says Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, which is releasing its 2011 findings exclusively through MediaPost publications this week.


Because the research, including the "drivers" Brand Keys uses to rank brands, are induced directly from the consumers of brands, Passikoff says the data represents exactly how consumers feel about those brands relative to other brands in their categories. Among social networks, Passikoff says Facebook is a dominant No 1, because it fulfills its users expectations about their own "self-image," which is the No. 1 brand driver among online social networks, followed by "ease of connection," "security and control" and overall "brand value."


With the exception of LinkedIn, Passikoff says all of the major social networks rank relatively low on security and control, but he notes that user concerns over privacy are not enough to offset the strong loyalty and engagement consumer derive from other aspects of social network brands.


Interestingly, the Brand Keys data indicates that while security and control are important issues among social media users, they contribute less than 20% of consumers' overall perceptions about social network brands in the index, and are far outweighed by a network's ability to reinforce a user's own self-image, and to give them easy connections, two things Facebook excels at.


Interestingly, Twitter, which has become the rage among celebrity users and is making lots of noise on Madison Avenue, fares worst in the Brand Keys index, by a wide margin.


"It's very low on security and control and it's the lowest on brand value and content," Passikoff says of the perception consumers have about Twitter's brand.


The findings could be significant for the long-term success of social networks, because branding experts believe consumer perceptions about brands can affect long-term performance and financial realities. Wall Street analysts typically treat brand value as part of the "goodwill" assets of a company, which depending on the industry and category, can be a significant portion of a company's overall valuation.


Top Social Networking Sites Ranked By Brand Loyalty


1 Facebook

2 MySpace

3 LinkedIn

4 Flickr

5 Twitter

Read more at www.mediapost.com
 

Monday, February 7, 2011

How to Measure Social Media Marketing | Analytics

Do you have a way to measure results from your social media marketing and activities?

Do you have something you like using or can recommend? Here is another tool from Social Report and you can try it free for 30 days.

Pierre Rattini, Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mobile Text Marketing
Local Directory Listings
Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com


Measuring your Social Message Impact

As we all tweet, tag, post, connect, follow and like - we all wonder if our message is reaching anyone out there. There are all sorts of metrics that people are using - from virality to engagement, from influence to chatter. Closed nature of the data behind all social networks isn't helping much either. They are probably saving all of their data till they can resell it to us in one form or another :) Good for them. In the meantime, we need to figure this stuff out. 
Most marketers share a very similar goal  - for people to take action. Action can be purchasing of a product, voting in a poll, commenting on a topic, etc. In most general terms - actions are typically hosted on a website (a checkout page, a poll). Good old link and website tracking to the rescue! 
One of the shortcomings of all link shortneners is that they stop short of telling us what happened after someone clicks the link and offer little capability to define "campaigns", a set of links related to a marketing initiative. Closing this gap is easy though. 
Here is an example of what an ideal social campaign should be able to do (let's face it, every tweet, every post is a campaign, this is what it is all about):
  • Post your message to your networks. Let's say a twitter feed, facebook page, and a linkedin. For example a typical Social Report message:

    Step by step social campaign management with Social Report  http://qoo.ly/399
  • This message will appear on all 3 targeted networks (extra features such as more precise scheduling, reoccurrence and timing are also quite valuable)
  • As folks click on the link from each network we are now able to precisely tell you where your clicks are coming from:
    Twitter: 25 clicks
    Facebook page: 130 clicks
    LinkedIn: 5 clicks


  • First conclusion - it appears that fans of our Facebook page tend to be more receptive to our message. This is a great first step! It would be even more useful however to find out how many of these people subscribe to our service once they read about our campaign management.
  • We will go ahead and place a small conversion script on our check out page

    <script src="http://qoo.ly/js/qooly.js"></script><script>client.init('1');</script>
    <noscript><img src="http://qoo.ly/u1.png" /></noscript><script src="http://qoo.ly/js/qooly.js"></script>
    <script>client.init('1');</script>
    <noscript><img src="http://qoo.ly/u1.png" /></noscript>

  • Now we are able to correlated the response with the action (subscription) and improve our marketing data as follows:

    Twitter: 25 clicks and 20 conversions.
    Facebook page: 130 clicks and 1 conversion.
    LinkedIn: 5 clicks and 0 conversions.
     
  • Wow! This is intriguing! Even though we got 130 clicks (responses) from our Facebook fan page - it is the twitter that brought us the most customers! 
  • Second conclusion: Twitter - a lot of substance, Facebook - a lot of noise.

  • Seems like we have done it all at this point. Yet, one more step can make this process more complete. How can we put a dollar value on what we've just done. Let's define few parameters:

    COST PER DAY (how much is our marketing initiative costing us per day?) = $1,000
    COST PER CONVERSION (perhaps merchant processing fees) - $5
    VALUE OF CONVERSION (in our case an average subscription is about  $20/mo) = $200

    Using the numbers from the example below (we ran this campaign for just one day):

    21 conversion * ($200 - $5) - 1 day * $1,000 (cost per day) = $3,095

    Woohoo! Things are looking good!

  • Third conclusion: through our 1 day of marketing we have increased our revenue by $3,095 per year.
Find out more about campaign management with Social Report here http://support.socialreport.com/entries/369653-campaigns-tracking-social-roi
Read more at socialmediatoday.com

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Super Bowl Ads 2011| What the heck did they get for $3,000,000

Was it just me or did the ads as a whole suck. There were a few bright notes in the Volkswagen and Pepsi Max ads. The majority were a waste of $3,000,000.



What did you like or dislike about the ads?

Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com

Super Bowl Ads 2011: Missed Opportunity to Connect & Inspire

Good thing for DVR as I now need to go back and watch the Super Bowl. I was too busy watching the commercials and of course tweeting the night away with all of the other marketing and advertising addicted twitter geeks!

iStock 000006939527XSmall Super Bowl Ads 2011: Missed Opportunity to Connect & Inspire

I know the social media audience is a tough audience to please. However, from what I could see there was definitely not a lot of excitement over this year’s ads.

What was missing? In my opinion the #1 most important aspect that was missing in the majority of ads was an emotional brand connection. It seemed that many of the ads were developed by their special effects internal team or agency without a real strategy.

Yes, I know it is a bonus and goal for most to take their commercial viral. I actually had a tweeter respond to one of my tweets lastnight telling me that Super Bowl advertising is not about brand but about going viral. Hello… since when is going viral not about connecting with an audience??

I disagree 100%. Yes, going viral is great, awesome for that matter. However, if you aren’t doing such by increasing brand equity, brand awareness or sales then why the heck would you do such in the current economy. Going viral usually requires a connection of sort be it humor, sadness, anger etc.

Bottom line, connection is the key to successful marketing. Inspire your audiences to connect with you. Spending exorbious amounts of money on an over rated, over complicated commercial is going to do nothing more to inspire connection than the right message said in the right way.  Often times the best ads are those that are the most simple, most easy to understand and remember.

We all have our opinions and favorites regarding the ads. The ones I remember are of course Chrysler, CarMax, NFL, Tiny Dancer and even Kia. I entered the second half with lots of cars to drive but little cravings for Doritos, soda or beer. Hmmm..maybe that is a good thing.  Although I really liked the Chrysler ad, I still struggle with Eminem combined with a church choir. Something about that just rubbed me “awkward” as my 10 yr old would say.

Why was there such a focus on war, border patrol and old cowboys? What happened to the good ol’ boys sitting and watching the football game? What happened with making us forget for a few hours the wars, the drowning 401ks? What happened to making me glad I live in this country and have the freedom to buy the products I want, live where I want to live and enjoy my life regardless of if I do it in an Audi, Kia or BMW?

GoDaddy, I guess I am no longer in your target market? Hmmm… maybe that is why I own 150+ domains with your competitors? Definitely didn’t inspire me to come back with the ads you ran lastnight!?

Why base a campaign on purchasing a new home, landscaping a yard when half of America just finished foreclosure, is in foreclosure or hoping they can make it thru 2011 without such. I don’t think purchasing a new home is what most Super Bowl viewers had on their mind Super Bowl Sunday afternoon. Instead they wanted to enjoy time with family and friends, eat too much food and enjoy a few brewskis made in America.

What would I have liked to see? More of what Chrysler did. Make me feel good about my country, the brands, my life and myself. Give me hope. Help me connect to you as the advertiser. Help me connect to my neighbors, my friends, my colleagues, my family via your brand. Help me connect via the common platform we have by drinking a cold Bud Light or PepsiMax together with a fresh open bag of Doritos. Don’t show some guy licking his colleagues finger. I’d have more to say than “stop that” if one of my colleagues did that to me!?

My understanding is there was more than $200 million spent on Super Bowl advertisements this year to reach an audience of approximately $110 million plus. How many of our own homeless people could we take off the streets or how many people could we put in a car to get to work if we took even 50% of that money out and put it to good use.

Next time let’s save the 50%. We can then spend the other 50% on actually getting in a room and being creative like the old days. Spend time working on a campaign that sparks a tear, makes someone laugh out loud. An ad that brings out emotion and helps us connect with the brands we love!?  Then I might be inspired to go visit their YouTube channel, comment and tell them thank you for making me feel good!

I saw very few inspirational invitations to join social networks. What a missed opportunity and social proof some of the big brands are yet to successfully leverage social media. It’s also proof they are even further away from integrating social media into the DNA of how they also leverage traditional media.  The ads of this Super Bowl almost make me believe they are caught somewhere in limbo as they forgot how to do traditional advertising too?

Next time invite me into your social network. Invite me to help you with your cause. Don’t slap a cause on to your commercial and then tweet about it like you were authentic. We’re smarter than that and can see you hadn’t tweeted about the mentioned charity the past week. Funny how it happened right after the commercial went live and the negative tweets started blasting.

As a marketer I get most frustrated when I see missed opportunity. In my opinion the ads of the Super Bowl were filled with missed opportunity. From social networking, accurate representation of the charities they support, to emotionally connecting with an audience. These in my humble opinion are big misses. Intentional or not, they were missed.

Your Turn?
What was your favorite? Did you feel let down by the quality of ads? What do you feel could have made them better?

Read more at socialmediatoday.com
 

Monday, January 24, 2011

6 Pros and Cons of Finishing what you start

I have been on both sides of this and the finishing has always been worth it. For some reason it juts is harder then other times to finish. Has this happened to you? I find when I focus on why I am doing it helps. If I don't get motivated by my why, I rarely finish. If I must finish I find a why that matters or a bribe myself with a reward that gets me excited to finish.



Do you have any tips you can share that have worked for you?

Amplify’d from lifehacker.com

The Pros and Cons of FinishingWhy do we bother finishing anything we start if it's not worth our time? And why would we leave ever waste our time working on something we won't finish? Here's why you should and shouldn't finish what you started.

PRO: We All Want a Sense of Accomplishment

The Pros and Cons of FinishingFinishing what you started gives you a great sense of accomplishment. Even if it's not something most of us consider fun—like cleaning your house—it's incredibly rewarding to know you accomplished the task anyway. You may not like every project, but if you get started you ought to finish. The sense of accomplishment gives you the self-esteem to know that you can get through anything you set your mind to, even if it's not always your favorite thing to do. You're not going to be able to always do the things you want to do, so it's best to build up a tolerance and the ability to handle the bad along with the good. In the end, you'll be a stronger and better worker.

CON: You Have to Start to Know if Something is Worth Finishing

The Pros and Cons of FinishingIf you come up with an idea that you think is fantastic, you may start working and find out it's a complete waste of your time. Why should you bother moving forward with that idea if it turns out to be a dud? Sometimes you have to start a project to really know if it's worth large amounts of your time. Finishing a crappy project isn't going to do anyone much good. At best you've wasted your time. At worst you'll be afraid to start new projects with the fear that you'll have to finish them even if they suck. Allow yourself to abandon things when they ought to be abandoned.

Comic by Nataliedee

PRO: You Don't Know The Future

The Pros and Cons of FinishingYour life is guaranteed to be boring if you never allow yourself to be surprised. The world has a capricious nature and, if you're open to it, you might discover incredible things you wouldn't if you closed yourself off. Let's say you started watching a movie and, 30 minutes into it, you hate it. You decide to leave. Perhaps the rest of the movie will be terrible, but perhaps you'll learn something incredible or gain something more valuable from the experience that you'd be abandoning if you didn't stick around. You never know what's going to happen, and if you act like you do you'll miss out on a lot. When you commit to finishing what you started you gain new possibilities that you wouldn't otherwise have.

CON: You Know What's Important

The Pros and Cons of FinishingYour time is valuable and you generally know the things that matter. If you hate something, don't waste time on it. There is not enough time in the world to remain open to everything you encounter. You can't read and answer every email. You can't finish everything on your to-do list. You can't see every movie you want to and you shouldn't. Some of them are going to suck. If you encounter a crappy movie, walk out. You have better things to do. There's a reason we prioritize our lives: if we didn't, we'd never sleep. Without priorities, choosing A over B, and cutting our losses, we'd never get anything done. Remaining open to every possibility in the world is romantic and idealistic, but it's hardly realistic. Be smart and don't bother finishing anything that doesn't seem to offer any real benefit.

PRO: You Made a Commitment, and You Should Keep It

The Pros and Cons of FinishingIt's one thing you abandon something on your own, but if you've made a commitment to somebody you've made a promise. When you agree to help somebody with something, they've put their trust in you. They believe you're going to help them. If it's something you might not be able to do or, perhaps, don't actually want to do but just want to help, don't commit in the first place. It's better to be unable to help in the first place than abandon someone after you've made a promise, so if you've made the commitment you better stick to it.

CON: Keeping Commitments That Make You Miserable Doesn't Help Anybody

The Pros and Cons of FinishingThere's no question that making a commitment to help somebody is an important promise, and it definitely sucks if you have to bail, but who hasn't been in a situation where you promise to help somebody but something unforeseen happens? Or you didn't accurately predict how you'd feel? Or you simply made a mistake? Continuing to work on a project you hate out of obligation is just going to make you miserable, and that's going to make the people you're working with miserable. Additionally, you're probably going to produce a bunch of miserable work. This doesn't help anybody. Keeping the commitment is honorable, but it's not necessarily what's best. Besides, you can always do the right thing and find someone to replace you. That's how it works when you leave a traditional job. Why shouldn't it be the same with one-off commitments as well?

What do you think? Should you always finish what you started or feel free to abandon anything you feel isn't worthwhile? Or are you somewhere in the middle. Share your thoughts in the comments.
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