Social Media is a communications TOOL just like a fax machine, a cell phone or email

Lately I've been seeing more and more articles discussiing which department controls the message of Social Media: Marketing or PR? I actually was asking that question a year ago in an article entitled…

When talking about Social Media I've found that many companies start by asking "What's the ROI?"  When you ask an accountant about this, they tell you that marketing is NOT an asset so there is no a ROI. That doesn't change the fact that Company Executives do need to know how to measure success of Social Media. ROI may just be the wrong terminology and asking the the right questions becomes the true key to success: What do you measure?

Measurement Tools

I've…

Social Media Outlook 2012

What’s in the Plan?

Social Media can be confusing. It’s an evolving and rapidly changing environment as more and more of the world’s population embraces one or…

My experiences with Social Media are showing me more and more that there are still far too many companies that don’t fully grasp the concept of Social Media. Yes, anyone can create a Facebook Page, Twitter Profile and set up a YouTube account, free of charge. But then what? Then what happens? This is where I begin to see kind of lack of respect for Social Media’s unparalleled capabilities and for what it is truly intended. In my opinion,…

The manufacturing industry has been somewhat slow to accept social media as a marketing tool. This is largely because it can be difficult to see how social media plays into the larger business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy. That, however, appears to be changing. Acccording to a…

I was recently talking to a headhunter who ONLY does Social Media recruiting. It was an interesting conversation to say the least. He was looking for several 20 somethings to fill positions for Social Media managers. As I tried to provide him with some names we ended up chatting about the State of the Social Media market right now and that led to a conversation about Social Media consultants.

Social Media recruiting

His problem, as he explained, was…

After some initial disappointing press coverage indicating the iPhone 4S was a thud, it now appears that the real impact of the iPhone 4S and IOS5 won't be realized until users get the product in their hands. We have to wait for Newton's Third Law of Motion to move and realign some marketshare positions and, potentially, some changes in strategic direction for your Social Media marketing programs.  It could just end up being the "thud" felt round the world.…

An awful lot has changed in the past year with regard to Social Media.  More and more companies are beginning to talk about using social media for their B-to-C and B-to-B business.  Many experienced Marketing Managers are now facing a dilemma. …

Somewhere around 1439 Johannes Gutenberg is attributed with the invention of the printing press. Gutenberg probably had no idea how his invention would affect history.  Without Gutenberg, we would not have Social Media as we now know it.  Gutenberg improved communication amongst people. Ideas could be spread more quickly and to a larger audience.…

Everything changes. Yesterday I was sitting in a meeting with a client and the subject of SEO came up.  We talked about some of the black hat issues and the importance of organic growth over time: The quality vs. quantity of 'likes' and 'follows'. In the course of the discussion I pulled up a keyword from another client who had gone to a completely digital market program 8 years ago and really knows and understand the digital space. My other client OWNS the entire first page for…

As you probably are aware Rapid Production Marketing "touches" several Twitter accounts in some way.  In some cases we act as monitors in an oversight role, in other cases we act as the fully 'outsourced' social media. We cross several industries including industrial, manufacturing, automotive, medical and even music.  As a result, we tend to see innovative marketing ideas generated in one market segment successfully that we can then transfer to another segment.  That, after all, is really…

1. Why did you start using social media?

TechniksUSA is a very careful company and we like to do our homework in both our products and our marketing efforts.  We’ve moved to almost entirely to digital marketing over the past few…

"How do I tell you that you don't know what you don't know"

I've had this same discussion far too many times. In my very humblest of opinion there are no experts yet. The entire space is evolving so quickly that what you thought you knew a few hours ago has changed. A new outlet has sprung up, a new option, a new potential way to use an existing tool, more people have arrived on an outlet and the dynamic has changed.

1849 and…

Founded in 1938, Kennametal manufactures a broad range of advanced materials and components that deliver superior wear resistance and peak performance in demanding environments.  The industries they sell to are as broad as their product offering, including aerospace, defense, energy, chemical processing, power generation, and mining.

Lead instead of trying to catch up.…

Social Media is a 'new' way to sell. Selling is, after all, about relationships. People do business with people that they "LIKE" and merely having a website, literature, advertising,etc. isn't going to generate revenue.

What Social Media is doing is creating a new paradigm. I know that that sounds cliché. But I believe that it's creating a new "type" of business. Traditional marketing adapted, very successfully in the 1980's thru 1990's, to creating websites after they had experience…

A shorter version of this article appeared in the American Machine Tool Distributor's Association "…