Yaffe Tidbits

Here's One Way to Find a Social Media Marketing Expert.

There are a lot of self-proclaimed experts and gurus out there,claiming to be able to help you navigate the web 2.0 world. Social media's been around for awhile, but the concept of companies using social media as part of their marketing mix is one that's just now really starting to take off. Most companies, especially small to mid-sized ones, don't know how to use it and are looking for experts. But how can you tell if the expert you're talking to truly knows what he or she is talking about. Are they able to practice what they preach? Finding out who really knows their stuff and is capable of creating measurable ROI was the idea behind Blog Off II - a contest that pitted bloggers against each other for 12 days in December. created by Andrew Ballenthin and the Community Marketing Blog.

I had the pleasure of being on the panel of judges who formed an international"Dream Team" of social media and digital marketing practitioners for the contest. We had 28 contestants from the U.S., Canada, England, Italy, India and the Netherlands who wrote over 110 blog posts. This created over 27,700 page views and generated over 1,260 comments. Those are good, hard number, and pretty amazing for a 12 day period. The entrants were judged on these numbers and then we (the judges) looked at qualitative characteristics such as writing quality, how well they engaged in conversation with their audience and other similar issues.  The top 3 winners split $45,000 in prizes, including a new logo and branding package designed by The Yaffe Group.

In order to do well, Blog Off II contestants needed to use all their social marketing skills to drive traffic to their posts. They needed to write good content about things people wanted to know more about. They had to engage them to get them to come to the blog and then engage them further in an on-going conversation once they got there. In the end, the winners were those who had already created a strong enough social network that they could tap into it and drive traffic. They were also those who had the strongest personal brand, so people were interested in what they had to say and trusted them enough to engage with them. In return, each blogger's social network was expanded by the contest and blog readership. And their personal brands were enhanced by being a part of it. That's the kind of results you want for your company's brand. It's also the qualities you want in a social media expert/guru.

Unfortunately, not everyone has been able to be a part of something like this that proves they truly understand how to use social media and leverage their own personal brand for marketing purposes. However, you can look at who excelled in this contest and watch for the upcoming Blog Off III. You can also look at the dream team and the community marketing blog team. Each of us has our own twist to offer and, since we've all built communities of our own, can likely direct you to someone who's the perfect fit for your needs, even if we're not.

The most important thing you can do when looking for someone to guide your company through the new social marketing landscape is to take the same care you would if searching for a new marketing firm, PR company, HR resource, employee trainer or any other professional service. Because, social media has parts of all those functions rolled into one and you need to make sure the person or firm you hire doesn't just talk a good game, they play it well, too.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director/Social Media Director

5 Ways to Improve Your Business on a Micro-budget

If you’re an entrepreneur or smaller business looking to get more business on a small to miniscule budget, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that with all the free and low cost tools available in the digital and social media world, you can be quite effective without spending a lot of money. The bad news? To make it work, you do need to invest a lot of time sprinkled with inspiration and innovation. Having a personality helps, too.

More good news: many individuals and companies are finding a lot of productive leads and connections through these channels. More bad news: it’s not a quick fix. It’s something you need to commit to and keep at. That doesn’t mean it will take you a year or two to see any results. But, it does mean you can’t just post a brilliant blog or open a Twitter account and expect the new business to start flooding through your doors.

Here’s 5 ways you can start improving your business without seriously hurting your bottom line:

1. Connect, connect, connect.

Use all the social networking tools available to you. Social networking is a great way to connect with people who may need your product or services. Just make sure you don’t start by broadcasting how great you are or trying to sell something. It’s like a cocktail party. Start with small talk; find out where you have common interests and where you can help them with their needs. It’s a good way to get to know someone you’ve never met before. Once they like and know you, they’ll be much more likely to want to do business with you.

I would suggest starting with LinkedIn if you haven’t gotten into any network. It’s the most business oriented site. Here’s a good post on how one business owner used LinkedIn to get a board of directors seat. From there, it’s a matter of preference and what type of business you’re in. You may want to start a Facebook fan page or personal page next. Or you may find the immediacy of Twitter is more to your liking. Here’s a good post by Lara Galloway on how she uses Twitter as one of her main new business tools.

2. Answer Questions on LinkedIn

One the best features on LinkedIn is the Q&A section. Why? It gives you a chance to meet people out of your network, help them with a problem they have and display your expertise. Just go to the sections where questions are being asked on subjects that fit your business offerings and your area of expertise.

Here’s just one example of how that’s worked for me. I saw a question from a guy writing a book on social media. He was looking for examples of social media success stories. I told him about a campaign we’d done for one of our clients that had worked well. He liked it, we linked together and over the next 6 months had several conversations through LinkedIn messaging. This fall he was looking for judges for a big Blog Off competition his company was having. I volunteered and became part of an international "Dream Team" panel. Besides the publicity of the contest itself, I will be listed in an upcoming book as one of the world’s top social media people, will be talked about on a Blog Talk Radio show that reaches millions and in video shows by one of Europe’s top providers of online content. Not bad for a small business owner in Detroit.

3. Use Blog Talk Radio

This is a free, easy way to create podcasts for your own enterprise. There are two ways you can use Blog Talk Radio to help your business. One is to sign up at blogtalkradio.com and host your own show. This way you can have your own radio talk show. You can invite guests who will speak on subject matters relevant to your audience or you can invite guests who represent companies you want to do business with. Or you can sometimes just speak on subjects you’re knowledgeable about and make those podcasts available to your potential clients. For an example of doing your own show, you can look at the Mom Biz Coach show.

The second, and easier, way to use Blog Talk Radio is to volunteer your expertise to someone who has a show. Our head of Yaffe Direct, Michael Morin, went on the Chuck Talks Business show and had an hour long interview. It went well and, with Chuck’s permission, we downloaded the podcast and posted it on our Yaffe Tidbits site. We then edited a 2-minute teaser of some of the best parts of the interview. We emailed the two minute version to a list of prospects along with a link to the full podcast. Within a few weeks we got several inquiries from potential clients who we never would have gotten to talk to otherwise.

4. Buy a Flip Camcorder

You can get a really nice Flip Camcorder for around $125; I’d also pop for the small tripod that’s about $20-25. The Flip is an extremely easy way to shoot, edit and post videos to your site, blog, Facebook fan page, YouTube channel or wherever you can add video to your online presence. Video is a way to really put a face on your business. You can simply set it up on the tripod, point it at yourself and record a video blog. You can also record and post client testimonials. It’s also small and portable that you can carry it with you when you go to a conference, meeting, seminar, tweetup or wherever. At these events you can ask people’s opinions on whatever issues you’d like to cover for your clients/potential clients. It takes nothing to plug the Flip into your computer and use the included edit system to string together the comments you like and post that video to one of your sites. All this adds to both your content and your credibility.

5. Blog about potential clients

If you have a blog for your business (if you don’t, start one now), you can meet potential clients simply by asking them if you can interview them for an upcoming blog post. It’s a great way to meet and get to know someone in a non-sales environment (important note: don’t try and sell yourself or company during the interview). Who doesn’t like the idea of someone wanting to interview them for their expert opinion? More often than not, you’ll be able to find someone willing to talk about their business for the free publicity for both their company and themselves.

Even if you don’t get an interview, do research on the company and write a blog post about what they’re doing right as a company. Here’s an example of a post I wrote about Biggby Coffee. After creating it, send the post to them. Even if it doesn’t peak their interest in you, they may link the post to their own site or blog. We still get traffic to our blog from companies that have linked to a post about them from many months ago.

There you have it. Five ideas that should get your business some attention without spending an arm and a leg. I’d say good luck, but it really is just a matter of good hard work.

Originally posted on the Mom Biz Coach Blog as a guest post by Mike McClure, Partner, ECD

Hey, Technorati! Here I am!

Ever wonder how you can claim your blog on Technorati? It's pretty easy. You go to their site and register yourself. Once you have done that go back to the site and click on your profile name to pull up your account info. You can then add stuff about yourself, upload your photo, create your byline and claim your blog. Make sure you update the personal spaces you filled in before clicking the claim your blog button or you'll have to enter it all over again.

Once you've clicked on the blog claim button, there are fields to fill out for your blog, it's name, url, keywords, a brief description of the blog, etc... Then you submit it and they send you an email The email has a code in it and a link to your appropriate account page. The code is some random letter and number sequence like SG426NCDTDQC or something very similar. They will tell you to post that code into a new blog post like, say... this one. After that you click the button on the account page that says you're ready to be verified and then the magic happens. This involves mostly waiting around for them to get back to you and let you know you're an okay Joe (or Jane).

It's worth it though, because then your blog posts can be found in the Technorati system, where they are discovered, move up in authority, become the basis for your vast new empire and you have the (slight) chance to become a mega digital celeb/guru, make millions and take over the world. Or at least make it easier for your aunt in New Jersey (hi, Aunt Ginny) to find your post about some obscure thing she never really could understand anyway.

Mike McClure, ECD, SMD & New Technorati member

"How Do I Monetize My Blogs & Podcasts?"

It's a question asked more and more. Businesses and individuals are putting more time into blogs, podcasts and other digital media. And they want to know how this is going to make them money. You know it's something you should be doing in this digital age, but you wonder just how are you going to monetize it.

The short answer: you don't. At least not in the traditional media/marketing model. Sure you can add Google Ad Words to your blog and when you get big enough, have sponsors and paid ads on your digital material. But that's not going to get you the value you put into your company's blog or podcasts. The real value is in increasing your company's and your personal standing as an expert - the kind of people that other companies want to do business with.

In his book, Six Pixels of Separation, Mitch Joel says, "Anyone who creates content is creating media. That is the advertising. Everyone keeps searching for the ad model in blogs and podcasts, not realizing that the content and the individual producing it are the media. People see you as an expert and want to work with that expert."

That's the point. How you monetized your digital content is through the business that results from people knowing you, your expertise and wanting to work with you as a result. There are countless examples of companies getting business through this method. We ourselves had two potential clients call us wanting to know more after listening to a recent podcast by the head of Yaffe Direct, Michael Morin.

You don't ignore ROI. To the contrary, you need to think about it - a lot. You just need to look at it differently. In her blog post "10 Crucial Roles of a Social Media Director" Liz Strauss puts "be about ROI" fourth on her list. She goes on to say, "ROI is so important. If we don’t sell things, no one has a job. For years, we’ve known the value of conferences and trade shows, yet no one knows exactly how to measure their return. I’m thinking a certain similarity applies."

The long and short of it is this: you need to be out there in the digital space building your expertise. You just need to look at the value of doing it differently. What do you think? Have a success story of your own? I'd love to hear it.

Mike McClure, Yaffe ECD & Social Media Guy

10 Ways Twitter Changed My Life

Guest blog by Lara Galloway, mompreneur, mom business coach and BlogTalkRadio host.

This month marks my one year anniversary of being on Twitter. Little did I know when I typed my first tweet last year how things would change! For instance, I could not have predicted back in October 2008 that Twitter would become “my office,” that I would eventually get 95% of my qualified leads from Twitter, and that I would be able to achieve my status as expert and go-to resource for mompreneurs in less than a year. For this, I owe a debt of gratitude to the developers of Twitter. Thanks, Guys!

As I look back over the past year, I can see what an impact this single tool has had on my business (and my life!).  I thought I’d share with you some of the specific changes that have occurred in my business as a result of using Twitter.

1)   Immediate access to people and information
I used to go to Google when I had a question or needed to research or understand something better. Now, I tweet. And all the questions I ask on Twitter get personalized, specific answers from friends and strangers who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise with me. I’m learning so much faster now!

2)   The ability to market myself 24/7 without leaving my house or spending a dime
I’m a mom to three kids aged seven and under. I don’t have the desire or time to arrange for childcare, get dressed up, and then commute to a networking event that doesn’t particularly fit in my busy day. Thanks to Twitter, I can network and market myself all the time, even when I’m not at my computer (and instead playing with my kids), and I get to be relaxed and comfortable in my own house and on my own time.

3)   Building amazing relationships with people who have shaped my business
What a gift to be able to connect with so many people I probably would never have met! I have found mentors, colleagues, friends, teachers, JV partners and (of course) clients on Twitter. We read each other’s tweets, comment back and forth and discover that we’re a good fit for each other. Then we start talking on the phone and some wonderful relationships are born. When I think of all the influence, inspiration and role models I’ve gleaned from Twitter, I’m hard-pressed to say I learned this much in my graduate school education.

4)   Meeting and getting to know my clients in a very comfortable environment before we ever talk money
Twitter provides a comfortable, no pressure environment for my future clients and I to get to know each other. We can chat back and forth for days, weeks, months without me feeling like I’m wasting my time or that I need to put pressure to “close the sale” (which is not my style anyway). I read and RT their tweets, browse their websites, read their blogs, and am able to know more about them and the work they’re up to before we ever discuss working together. And I’m a full-disclosure kinda gal, so I share my honest thoughts, my mistakes, and my tips and advice with them on Twitter. That tends to attract people to me who are interested in my coaching, so I never have to “convince” someone to hire me.

5)   Having a pipeline full of warm leads that are steadily moving closer to hiring me
The marketing gurus say it takes somewhere between 7-10 “touches” before the average person is ready to buy from you. How hard would it be to accomplish this without Twitter? Well, it was hard enough for me that I rarely did it in my business before I got on Twitter. Now, 7-10 tweets is something I can accomplish in an hour!

6)   Being surrounded and inundated with messages from my target market and what they want from me, making it easy for me to create solutions for them quickly
Are you doing marketing research? Well, I didn’t do it at all before I got on Twitter. I just came up with an idea I thought was good and tried to sell it to other people I thought needed it. Didn’t work so well and wasted a lot of my time and energy. Now I do searches on keywords and browse tweets and the people who are tweeting them to see what my target market is talking about. I watch/listen for problems, struggles, and pain points, and then start developing my solutions. When I have a new idea, I simply ask my followers on Twitter what they think of it. Good response? I create the offering. Low/bad response? I ditch it and move on.

7)   Being approached by other thought leaders who invite me to speak, collaborate, teach, write or coach, rather than me hunting for these outlets of exposure
Really, who has time to hunt for opportunities? Thanks to Twitter and my marketing strategy that is built around it, I am no longer a hunter and am now a receiver of opportunities to do cool things with other cool people. My presence on Twitter helps other people find me, and we’re able to connect and build things together that I would never be able to do by myself.

8)   The most powerful tool I know of to build visibility, credibility and my brand
Well, enough said. Almost. Because I like to talk and write J. I have around 8,500 followers. That means that everything I tweet reaches all of these people. And then there’s the whole viral thing, which means that all the people following those people see my tweets, too. And so on. My Twitter profile is my virtual business card. How else could I get my business card into the hands of 8,500+ people (and I only have to type 140 characters to do it)

9)   Creating a single platform in which I can leverage everything else I do in my business
I can tweet about my blogposts, my podcasts, my videos, my mastermind groups, my membership programs, my articles, my info products and my BlogTalkRadio shows with just a few clicks of the mouse. Twitter is the center of my online presence, making it easy for people who are interested in finding out more about what I do to have easy access to all I offer.

10)   Feeling supported and appreciated
When you run a home-based business, it can get pretty lonely. Who even knows that you’re there, in your home office, doing great things? Who checks in on you to see how you’re doing when you’re not sitting in a big office building surrounded by co-workers? When I’m bored, lonely, or need some boosting up, I tweet about it. Within minutes, several of my friends (and even a few random strangers) send me happy tweets. When fighting kids and motherhood have me stressed to the hilt, some soothing (or hysterical) tweets from my tweeple make it all better. When I’m excited about something and just dying to share it with others, I tweet about it. I get dozens of congratulatory tweets back from my followers. This is the stuff that keeps me going!

So it’s no wonder why I’ve become a Twitter evangelist. When one simple, free tool can make such a big, positive difference, who wouldn’t want to use it? I LOVE TWITTER!

Lara Galloway
The Mom Biz Coach

You can connect to Lara through Twitter (obviously), her blog, her website, her YouTube channel or her BlogTalkRadios how or email: lara@mombizcoach.com

10 Things I learned at Brand Camp `09

I attended the Brand Camp University event this last Saturday and it was a fabulous day filled with wonderful and inspiring speakers. It was great a brain dump of information and inspiration. There was way too much stuff to detail in one blog, but here's some of the highlights of what I learned at Brand Camp 09:

1. It's time to Grustle.  Brand Camp organizer Hajj Flemings, kicked off the day talking about "grustle" - a combination of the daily Grind (what you have to do to make a living) and Hustle (the stuff you are passionate about and love to do) The key to personal happiness is finding your grustle; working at something you love to do.

2. Harley Davidson doesn't sell motorcycles.  Speaker Mitch Joel talked about the three conversations you need to have about your brand: internal, one-to-one and one-to-many. He said the internal conversation is about "finding the real you, what you're all about, what you like and don't like." His example of a brand knowing "what the real you is" was Harley Davidson, who says they don't sell motor vehicles, they sell the ability for 43-year-old accountants to dress up in leather and ride through a small town and have people be afraid of them.

3. The world's only Museum of the Weird is in Austin, TX.  While talking about his "10 Keys to Building a Powerful Personal Brand" speaker Rohit Bhargava's #3 item was "Find your Twist." The idea wasn't just about finding what makes your brand unique, it was also about finding your niche within your arena, whether that's within your field or your geographic region. Austin is proud of it's weird vibe, has tee-shirts proclaiming the city and it's denizens as being weird. Turning a trinket shop into a Museum of the Weird was someone finding their twist. Been meaning to get down to Austin for some time, now I have to go!

4. Participation is an ecosystem. One of the things Valeria Maltoni of CoversationAgent.com spoke about is the idea that there is a whole ecosystem to the act of participating in the conversations online. In the center is your content (for instance, you're blog). The first circle around that center is the people you know. The next circle out is the people who know the people you know. Different levels of participation allow you to move through the circles and expand them as you network.

5. PETA is everywhere.  Even in a focused and limited attendance conference PETA fanatics can raise their heads. Some protester shelled out the cash to attend just so she could attack presenter Ken Brown about McDonald's chicken killing processes. It was an interesting diversion and both the organizers and Mr. Brown handled the interruption well, quickly moving on.

6. People will pay to watch you burn... and that's a good thing.  Speaking of Ken Brown, he's a very high energy and dynamic speaker. He worked the crowd without any visual or audio aid. One thing he said was 'if you find your passion, people will pay to watch you burn." That goes for personal and corporate brands. If you are very passionate about what you do, it will come across and people will sit up and take notice.

7. You can get a room full of multi-tasking social media geeks to shut up & pay attention.  Paraplegic Olympic 100m sprint gold medal winner, April Holmes, had the room in silence (except for the occasional sniffle) with her moving and inspirational story. Not a single tweet went out on the #brandcamputwitter feed during the DVD detailing her journey.

8. We're living in an age of the Rise of the Brandividual.  Ford social media guru, Scott Monty spoke on how some personal brands are becoming as powerful as corporate brands. And some of those personal brands are inextricably tied into the corporate brand. Such is the case of Steve Jobs and Apple or Richard Branson and Virgin. He said 77% of people trust big companies less than they did last year (and last year wasn't exactly a banner year). they trust people they know and trusted 3rd party experts. So, a brandividual may carry more weight and garner more trust than the company brand alone.

9. Only 3 things distinguish social media.  Biggby Coffee's CEO, Biggby Bob Fish said social media appears to be just another method of message distribution except in these three ways: 1. It gives your brand personality. 2. It allows for interactions and dialog with the consumer. 3. It allows you to consolidate your media.

10. I'm going to want to go again next year.  It was definitely worth the time and money. I learned a lot. I saw some very dynamic and good speakers. I walked away inspired. I got a couple free books and a tee-shirt (which my wife already stole). Speaking of books, there were a lot of good titles recommended. I put together a list of them in a separate post you can find here.

Mike McClure, The Man, The Brand, The Yaffe Group Social Media Brandividual

What Makes Seth Godin So Smart?

I’ve read 3 or 4 books written by Seth Godin and liked them a lot. I have seen him speak several times and found his speeches witty and captivating. I read his blog almost every day. I’m on the email list. Heck, before he was really famous I even met him and shook his hand. We had a cup of coffee together. Well at least we were both holding coffee cups as we met in passing in a crowded hallway. Way back then (almost 9 years ago) he was preaching from the gospel of permission based marketing. Talk about being ahead of the curve!

He still stands at that pulpit on a regular basis. However, more often than not he seems to be branching out into other topics and areas. I enjoy all of these for several reasons. I think first and foremost he writes about self reliance. A recent post of his titled Graduate school for unemployed college students gave all of those recent college grads who haven’t been able to find a job some really great advice about what to do about their situation now. Rather than bemoaning the current state of the job market and settling for something to just tide them over (which is great as long as you’re doing more than just that).

In another post, Slack, he writes;

“A lot of corporations have seen dramatic decreases in revenue and have cut back projects as well. In many cases, this is accompanied by layoffs, and so everyone is working far harder.

But in other organizations, and for a lot of freelancers, there's more time than work. In other words,slack time.

Assume for a moment you don't have money to develop and launch something new. So, what are you going to do with the slack?”

 

Not to steal the thunder in case you want to read his post the 2 suggestions are; Learn something new and earn a following and reputation.

Whether you are a employed, unemployed or freelance, these are simply invaluable and smart nuggets of wisdom.

Mike Morawski

Chief Development Office

Is Your Company using Social Media? Here's Good News, Bad News.

If your company has not dipped its proverbial toes into the social media pool yet, I have some bad news to tell you. According to the latest figures, nearly 90% of all companies are using some form of social media. So, you're behind the vast majority of businesses. But, there's good news, too. Over half of those companies using social media only started doing so in the last 4 - 5 months. Which means, you're not that far behind if you get started soon.

What is social media? It's essentially ways for people (and brands, products and companies) to connect to one another and have their views be heard. It's everything from blogs, message boards and customer ratings online to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

For business, social media is a research tool that allows you to know what your customers and potential customers are thinking about you, your product, the competition and general issues in your category. Knowing what they are looking for and what’s bothering them allows you to help them achieve their goals in a way that’s beneficial to both you and them. It allows consumers and brands/companies to participate in new ways that allow for positive business results.

Social Media adds a "pull" media to your traditional "push" media lineup. Marketers are used to pushing their messaging at consumers via traditional media. But, the Internet, social media and mobile devices has allowed the consumer to take much more control, to seek out whatever answers they want, to get other’s opinions on products and services. If you feed this need, you will benefit. You can’t control the push media, but you can participate in positive ways. If you connect with your customers and give them value without trying to "sell" them, you will positively impact your brand. For more information on how your brand can provide value, read "Building a Generous Brand"

The most popular social media for businesses seem to be blogs, Facebook and Twitter. But, you don't want to run out and start a blog right away. You need to learn how to listen first. If you jump into a blog right away, you risk bringing your traditional. push marketing mentality into the tone of your blog. Once you've mastered listening to what you customers are saying out there, you can start to respond and then add value to the equation.

I follow a lot of companies in our fields of expertise on Twitter and it's amazing what kinds of innovative things different companies are doing. Henry Ford Hospital had three surgeons Twitter thorugh the entire process of a surgery (whichever doctor wasn't working on the surgery at the time sent out tweets as to what was going on). This gives consumers a front row seat into a world that was never accessible to them before. If you were worried about needing surgery or wanted more info on what went on. You could follow the whole procedure live, as it happened. To get more tips and discover some other innovative ways businesses are usingTwitter, read Michael Estrin's post "Meet the Brands that 'get' Twitter."

So, if you're company's behind the surge into social media, it's okay. Just get started now. You don't have to be a big company to rule social media either. A lot of innovative smaller companies are doing a great job at it. The important thing is to get started. Don't know how and don't have someone to guide you? Email me at mikem@yaffe.com and I'll send you our 5-step guide to getting started in social media. And I'll answer any questions you may have, if I can. No charge, no sell. It's just our way of being a generous brand.

Mike McClure, Executive Creative Director and Social Media Advocate

 

Let’s Keep Facebook Fun, People

Guest post by Geoffrey Abraham, author of the Look Lefty blog. 

You’ve seen it before.

You’re a little bored, you log into Facebook and your social networking buzz is quickly killed by the inevitable bad news update. For instance:

Molly Jenkinson is hoping her hubby has better luck this week on the job hunt. Can’t take much more of him being home.

John Quimby is hello Monday. You sure look a lot like Saturday and Sunday.

Paul Hatfield is sad.

I’ve changed the names to protect the pathetic, but these are real posts I’ve seen along with countless other layoff laden updates that practically beg you for a condolence, or even to pry for more information.

That may be what’s on their mind, as Facebook so politely asks with every log in. But that query should be treated like someone asking how you’re doing. They don’t really want to know how you’re doing. Especially when your response is bad and it goes out to hundreds of "friends" who haven’t heard from you in several years. It’s a courtesy. And the courteous response should be, "fine thanks," or in the case of a Facebook status update, some witty variation thereof (I can even live with the non-witty updates, which are aplenty

– those people just don’t know any better).

I understand that what I am witnessing is a sign of the times. In real time. I can even imagine these downtrodden folks thinking, "hey, I have a lot of friends in here. Maybe one of them can get me a job." But nothing is less attractive than desperation. And nothing sounds more desperate to a potential employer, or several hundred of the people you’ve come to know throughout your life, than bemoaning your out-of-work status on Facebook.

As someone who recently lost their job, I can only tell you that the last thing I want all 356 of my "friends" to know is that I was laid off. Most of those people don’t even know what I do. It would be like putting on 60 pounds before my high school reunion and telling everyone I still live in my parents’ basement. So, ah, if you want to come over and hang out later…

Facebook is where I go to look up old girlfriends (or more accurately, girls I wished were girlfriends but just wanted to be "friends"). It’s where I go to relive bad college haircuts, which may be why I could never get those girls. And occasionally, it’s where I go to see the odd status update from someone who never struck me as all that odd.

Facebook is also a great resource. And it should be used to your advantage when times are tough. But be tactical about it. Find the folks in your network who are in a similar field. Find out what they’re up to, who they know or what they can suggest. Better yet, sign up for LinkedIn where everyone’s looking for a new job.

And for the love of all that’s sacred, most especially your own personal dignity, please don’t tell me your troubles if we haven’t spoken in 15 years. I just don’t want to know.

Social Media – All Grown Up & Marketable

  MySpace, Facebook and the rest of the social media world tends to conjure up visions of teens, tweens and hipsters exchanging nonsense and silliness after school and late at night. Right? Well, maybe once upon a time. But just earlier this week WIReD, a web intelligence division of J.D. Powers was in our office showing us some very sophisticated methodologies using social media and blogs to do all kinds of consumer research. It was impressive and I think our research division, Yaffe/Deutser, will be able to take J.D. Powers  ideas and what we’re already doing and put together some exciting new programs that give our clients new insights.

Social Media isn’t just for kids any more. According to a recent report, over 50% of bloggers are over 30. And there are social media sites strictly for professional networking and problem solving. LinkedIn is probably one of the most popular. You can use the “Ask Questions” feature to get ideas and solutions to whatever you’re trying to work out. And make new contacts in the process. I myself am almost 50 and I have a LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter account that I’m active in daily. We plan to roll out social media pages for our company soon. And in today’s world it just makes sense. Take a look at my earlier post on Twitter for one example.

Marketers have taken notice of these trends. At Yaffe we’re working on a number of projects that take advantage new social media marketing opportunities. Of course, some of those are still targeted at the younger set. One program we’ve developed puts viral videos we’ve developed on social media pages where high school students are to attract them to the community colleges or universities we’re marketing.

So, how about you? What are you doing personally in social media? What are you doing to market yourself, your company or your clients?

Mike McClure, Executive Creative Director