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Jun 30 2013

Social Media Institute Names Top 25 Most Powerful Marketers

Another list? Yes: this list of the Top 25 Most Powerful Marketers is hot off the presses.

This is an experiment. We’re coming up with an entirely subjective list, and we’re doing so just for the linkbait. Let’s see if anyone takes this seriously.

We’re midway through 2013, and it’s time to see who are the most powerful marketers, according to the Social Media Institute*.

This list was created using a proprietary formula, taking into account Twitter and Facebook presence, as well as a “Concentric Circle Measurement” that factors in things like positivity and reach.

Here’s the July 1 ranking, created by the Social Media Institute.

Top 25 Social Media Marketers.

25. Jason Falls

Jason Falls is currently the VP of Digital Strategy at CafePress, and he blogs at Social Media Explorer.

24. Michael Stelzner

Michael is the guy behind Social Media Examiner.

23. Scott Stratten

Have you heard UnMarketing speak? Read his books? Certainly you’ve seen him on Twitter!

22. Shelly Kramer

Shelly runs a shop called V3 in Kansas City.

21. Sam Fiorella

He has a book called Influence Marketing, with the guy listed below…

20. Danny Brown

Danny is part of ArCompany, and blogs at Danny Brown.

19. Olivier Blanchard

Olivier is considered one of the sharpest marketers out there, and his site is called The Brand Builder.

18. David Armano

Works at Edelman as EVP of Digital.

17. DJ Waldow

Wrote a book with Jason Falls (#25, above) AND runs a firm called Waldow Social.

16. Amber Naslund

Amber is part of the team behind Sidera Works.

15. Christopher Penn

Christopher works at Shift, a PR firm. Don’t confuse them with the Shift platform.

14. Chris Brogan

Chris just appears to be everywhere. President of Human Business Works.

13. Gary Vaynerchuk

First he created Wine Library TV, then he launched a multimedia empire.

12. Sean McGinnis

Before starting at Sears, Sean was in charge of 312 Digital. They have a really powerful post on Link Building.

11. Marjorie Clayman

Marjorie works for the family business – Clayman Marketing Communications.

10. Jason Konopinski

Jason has a great blog and podcast.

9. Ken Mueller

Ken is part of the team at Inkling Media.

8. Mitch Joel

One of the most influential authorities on blog marketing, Mitch also has a new book out.

7. Seth Godin

Can’t say enough about Seth Godin.

6. Jay Thompson

Jay works at Zillow, and was formerly the Phoenix Real Estate Guy.

5. Dave Van de Walle

Dave is the author of a book on real estate social media, and is Managing Principal of Area 224.

4. Pete Cashmore

Created Mashable.

3. Ev Williams

Created Twitter.

2. Mark Zuckerberg

Created Facebook.

1. Jack Jones, America’s Social Media Consultant

A legend in his own mind.

So, what do you think…should you take lists like this seriously? Do you know they’re entirely written for linkbait? Are you in on the joke?

This is a subjective list – even though the list avoided first-person pronouns, it’s still one guy’s opinion. Clever, no?

By the way…

Dave from Area 224 is working on another launch – Metasip. Real wine, beer, and spirits reviews by real people.

*- Last we checked, there is no Social Media Institute.

Mar 19 2012

Social and Search for Marketing and Communications

If you’re new here, you can scroll down on the right hand side and sign up for our periodic newsletter. We’d love to keep the dialogue going with you…

What’s really interesting to me about where we are in modern marketing, communications and social media is this:

If you asked the experts what ONE thing to focus on…you’d get dozens of answers.

This is one reason we’re pleased to announce our next big (HUGE) webinar (that we’re doing TWICE), coming up on March 22nd and March 29th (plus you get a copy of our updated e-book).

Social Search Webinar

We don’t want to give away everything – this is a paid webinar and, even though the price is VERY affordable, we HAVE to save some of what we’ll talk about for the day(s) of the event. BUT, in the spirit of whetting your appetite:

1. There is no silver bullet

That’s a given – if there WERE a silver bullet, everyone would have purchased it. (The price of silver would have gone way up, too, supply and demand being what they are.)

But, and back to our point from earlier, there is no one thing experts can agree on when it comes to where to focus. For every one person who says “Google+ is a vast wasteland” there’s someone else who says “it’s from Google, and it allows you to laser-focus on your niche.” And so on, and so forth.

2. Getting Found, Findability, Inbound Marketing, etc., are still vital

Part of the problem here – and we struggle with it, too – is that you could conceivably focus all your time on the SEO basics – and forget why you’re doing it all in the first place.

I know a guy who’s writing a book, and he’s using the traditional publishing route. The opportunity for him is to leverage all of the time he spent as a blogger of note – and turn that into cachet with publishers. And those publishers are sniffing around on the Internet ANYWAY, looking for the next big thing (topic, author, trend) to turn into a publishable book.

SO…this guy has a nice problem to have in that he’s getting found, but he may not be found for the right things for his book project. Hmmm. See the next point:

3. “Integrated” is the word

Content. Convergence. Whatever you want to call it, all this stuff working together is making this the “Integrated” generation. This means you can’t put out a press release and get a billion hits without telling the rest of the company what the heck you’re up to. And so on, and so forth…

So there’s your 1-2-3 sneak peek. Will we see you on the webinar?

Here’s a clever signup button, too. Again, affordable price, tons of value. We’re here to help you get Social and Search for Marketing and Communications just right.

Apr 12 2011

Ignore Your Personal Brand at Your Own Peril

Mistake #5 in our Top 5 Small Business Marketing Mistakes special series. Plus some bonus material.

Mistake #5…Ignoring YOUR “Personal Brand”

“Brand.” “Personal Brand.” Gee, which one to put in quotes.

Step one is to remember the following.

Your brand is NOT your logo.

Brand: A series of experiences, of expectations, of behaviors that people associate with your product or service. Or your company. Or YOU.

Your Personal Brand = the series of experiences that people associate with YOU.

When small business owners dive into social media, they start to find people finding them – whether they like it or not, and whether they’re prepared or not.

Your restaurant, your coaching practice, your real estate practice, your dry cleaning business…the list goes on…these things are extensions of you, the business owner. And the sum total of all that stuff you say and do online will be attached to YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS.

BUT, watching your P’s and Q’s – well, that’s what you do anyway with your business. If you think of your online social media marketing time as an extension of what you do at the front of the store (greeting customers, providing excellent customer service, making a great product), you’ll go far.

And so will your personal brand.

Final thoughts…Don’t Be Afraid…To Make Mistakes of Your Own!

One thing is constant – change.

Today’s Twitter is tomorrow’s MySpace. Or something else. We know that will change over time.

But there’s a constant set of behaviors, on- and off-line, that sets average businesses apart from stellar businesses. That keeps average people from breaking through and becoming huge successes.

Do we have all the answers when it comes to those behaviors? Heck no. And don’t hire someone who says they do.

BUT…

We’ve watched this space evolve – from small business marketing to social media marketing. From the “send out a bunch of emails” world of a few years ago to the “how many followers do you have?” world we’re in now.

Engagement Marketing, Authenticity Marketing, whatever you want to call it…it asks YOU to get involved. To have conversations. To share with others. To build real relationships. To get real.

Go get ‘em!

Mar 18 2011

Always Be

Photo Credit: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid
The line from “Glengarry Glen Ross” is “Always Be Closing.”

It’s an awesome movie. Alec Baldwin’s performance is amazing. Watch this clip, pulled from YouTube, if you haven’t seen it a million times before. (NSFW – that means “Not Suitable For Work.”)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

A wonderful spend of 7 minutes. Baldwin’s character spells out a couple acronyms in his NSFW diatribe, including AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, part of the sales funnel that we think is dead) and the most famous, or infamous, ABC. Always. Be. Closing.

ABC should be replaced, though. As this very 80s clip from a very non-PC workplace will show you…this stuff doesn’t work anymore. Some alternative suggestions:

ABR. “Always Be Recruiting.”

Tech Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist Mark Suster pulled out a can of awesome yesterday in his TechCrunch advice to startups. And that was his point: if you as an A-List Tech Exec are not out searching for more like-minded people at all times, your business will stagnate, you’ll be relegated to the B-List, and you’ll recruit C-List players.

We have seen this time and again – and not just in technology and startups, but in all types of businesses.

The “Turf Warriors” are, IMHO, the worst – their mission is to protect their own empire, and you can see it in the type of people they hire. You may have worked for one before, you may be working for one now. Most of the time, the people they hire are lacking gravitas, or might not have top-notch skills.

Don’t go there with your own business, your own department. If you’re not hiring somebody who is, to borrow Suster’s term, “punching above their weight class,” you need to take another look at your own hiring practices.

Always. Be. Recruiting.

ABL: “Always Be Launching.”

I have been accused of having ADHD – not because I’m all over the map, but because I seem to be working on the next thing all the time.

I don’t have ADHD – I’ve been checked out for that – but I do have an addiction (of sorts) to product launches.

This is borne out of two things. One is necessity – I need to make a living, and having something new to offer clients and prospects helps me do that. Two is constant improvement – I want to see people in my circle (clients, friends, associates, whomever) make more meaningful connections that improve their business.

As a result, I am always launching.

Your next question is “what about failure?”

The beauty of having multiple product lines, service lines, things to offer clients and prospects, is this: some of them will not work. Not all of them are for everyone. But being in constant launch mode leads to more (gasp) innovation – because this thing may not be what they need, but the next thing very well may be.

Always. Be. Launching.

ABY: “Always Be Yourself.”

I have seen some awesome things happen to online friends of late – things that could never happen to me. There’s Erika Napoletano, Redhead Writing, who will be penning for Entrepreneur Magazine. There’s Paige Worthy, whose “Hire Me” page led to a gig with YouSwoop.

These particular things could never happen to me – because, well, I’m not the kind of person who writes in Erika’s style, and my story and Paige’s story are pretty different.

But other things could happen to me. And to you.

You have a voice – read this awesome post from Danny Brown – and your mission is to find that voice. You could be like the woman who digs gaming so much that you do your own web show. (Not the famous one, but a different one. One that’s more, well, you.) You could be the guy whose food truck rocks, or the gal whose jewelry rocks or the rock band that actually does rock.

But you can’t get there if your aspiration is to be somebody else.

We just went through this exercise as part of our launch (natch) of 12 Minute Marketing. We revisited our own mission statement – which keeps evolving, but it’s pretty true to the “voice” that we’ve developed over the past six months of daily blogging, and over the past 4 years of being in business.

To provide training and consulting in new media, digital media and social media that helps business owners and managers to better connect with people and sell more stuff.

Which, I think, is pretty much what we are good at doing over here at HQ.

Always. Be. Yourself.

Mar 13 2011

Hellobar Helps Japan

Love it when the tech community helps in ways big and little…

After the Japan Earthquake last week, just about everyone is asking how they can help.

Our friends at Hellobar stepped in – their tool can be seen on the top of this site, that red bar with the link on it.

Hellobar has been running their own bar with a link to the American Red Cross, and we’ve decided to do the same.

If you want to get your own Hellobar to use on your site, we have a few more invites – you can use it for whatever reason you wish, just visit our FB fan page and “like” us. We’ll get you a beta invite.

Prayers to our Japanese friends, who need just about everything at this time of great need.