It seems everything is political during an election year. There was a great reminder of this recently when a ‘political activist’ dug through the old tweets of Dominoes on Twitter and somehow found a tweet from 2012 where Domino’s was thanking a customer for tweeting a compliment to the brand. So what? This brand did […]
How Bear Bryant Cultivated Lifelong Alabama Football Fans in the 1960s
One of my hobbies is collecting autographed footballs from former Alabama teams. Often, former teams will have a 25th anniversary or even 50th anniversary reunion, and I like to attend these when I can and get members from that team to sign a football for me. I attended one of these reunions for a team […]
Understanding the Tool Doesn’t Help If You Don’t Understand Your People
I’ve often been told that I could make a nice career for myself just by advising companies how to start and maintain a blog and social media channels. I sometimes do such consulting, but not that often. One of the reasons why is because too many companies are focused on learning the social media tools […]
Twitter Will Soon Give Users the Ability to Control Who Can Reply to Tweets
I’ve been pretty critical of Twitter’s recent attempts to ‘manage the health of the conversations‘ on its platform. Too often, these efforts seem to set in place mechanisms that could automatically enhance or suppress content based on whether or not this content contains certain topics. It could lead to giving an artificial impression that some […]
Over the Hills and Far Away: The Rock Star’s Guide to Building an Online Community
Jessica Northey-Shaw is kind of a big deal in the country music scene. She’s worked with many of the industry’s top artists, and her #CMChat is probably the largest chat on Twitter, she’s had artists such as The Oak Ridge Boys, Charlie Daniels, Clint Black and Alabama as guests. She told me once that one […]
Baltimore Orioles Write Handwritten ‘Thank You’ Notes to Season Ticket Holders
Coming off an atrocious 108-loss season, the Baltimore Orioles decided to double-down on thanking the season ticket holders that stood by the team. The players recently wrote handwritten thank you letters to season ticket holders. Orioles Director of PR Kirsten Hudak talks about pitching the idea to the players: “I wasn’t sure what the reaction […]
Why Do Rock Stars Have Fans, While Companies Have Customers?
Gene Autry was a rock star decades before there was such a term. From the 1930s to the 1950s, “The Singing Cowboy” was one of the nation’s brightest film, radio and television stars. He died in 1998 as one of the richest 400 Americans, and the only entertainer in that group. I was recently watching […]
Selling Your Passion vs Selling Your Product
The vast majority of companies I work with are using social and digital media to build awareness for their brands. Typically, they contact me because their efforts aren’t getting the results they need. One of the first mistakes I often find is that these companies are selling before the buyer is ready to make a […]
How to Segment Your Engagement Strategy Based on Customer Type
Most companies have a customer engagement strategy, but that strategy views customers as one type and structures the strategy accordingly. Yet your customers are very different people, they might be a part of a larger group, but there are many smaller subsets of the larger group that your company should be aware of. Let’s review […]
The Secret Language of Happy Customers
Let’s say you are a die hard fan of the movie Memento, like I am. Think about the conversation you would have with someone who just saw the movie for the first time last night. Most of their input would likely be along the lines of “WTF did I just watch???” Now how would that […]