social media

I took one accounting class in college. And, honestly, I really enjoyed it. Something about the evenness of liabilities, assets and equities appealed to me. So, with that expertise in mind, let’s talk about the cost of doing business.

The cost of doing business, by definition, is overhead. It’s the cost of anything you have or do that doesn’t have to do with actually producing a good or service. These include: insurance, utilities, accounting services, attending networking events.

One of my high school teacher’s favorite phrases was “Keep It Simple, Silly!” (she was too polite to use the other form of the phrase) – and it’s always been one of my favorite lines. It works for almost everything – work, love, family, cooking, writing, designing – 99% of the time, you’re better off keeping it simple.

I have one word for you. Operations. The coolest, shiniest, most innovative "look at me!" social media idea ever can easily be tripped up by this one word. Foursquare specials, Groupons, Twitter deals, Facebook coupons are all methods used by major brands to get customers off their computers and into the store. They spend months planning, measuring, strategizing and partnering, yet so many forget this one key word: Operations.

Before rolling out a campaign, there are countless operations things to check:

There's a disconcerting trend among companies now to hire a social media or community manager via a contest. People can seek nominations from friends or put their own name forward in an attempt to prove that they're the most popular choice for the position.

In my 2 years on Twitter, I've found it to be an incredible networking tool, resource and place to vent. And in the past months, it's become even better - brands are proactively reaching out to answer questions I have. How? A variety of ways, but many are using a tool called Twitter Search.

I work just north of Addison Circle, and it's nice sometimes to go out and walk around and not look at a computer for a few minutes. However, I've found that Addison Circle is a complete failure of usability, especially for first time users. Here's how:

Tonight, I'm watching the Oscars. And I'm watching it in a way I haven't in the past several years: live. I DVR everything - I DVR'ed the Olympics, I record baseball and I couldn't even tell you what night my favorite show airs. But tonight, I'm sitting through what seems like hours of commercials for one reason - Twitter. For me, to watch the Oscars on a delay would mean turning of Twitter and Facebook for the night - the humanity!

Broadcast networks have taken Twitter integration to different levels. For Fox, it involved invasive "live tweets" from show stars. For NBC, it's apparently a token integration to appease both their audience and the athletes taking part in this year's Winter Olympics.

I read a recent post by Alan Wolk, and his conclusion really stood out to me:

"I’ll leave you with this quote from a smart young guy named Matt Daniels 'Marketing has a bell curve–most companies create average marketing and achieve average results.' Why did we think social media was going to be any different?"

Today, museums, organizations, visitors and enthusiasts around the world celebrated the first #followamuseum day. Organized by Jim Richardson of the blog Museum Marketing (UK), the campaign asked Twitter users to share their favorite museums to follow and discover new ones as well.