MarCom Professional

As a fellow member of the publishing industry, I’ve been struggling a bit lately to wrap my head around our emerging role on the internet, in the marketplace, and in society.

In that struggle, I hope to point to a few basic and critical issues at the heart of the debate. From what my research is telling me thus far, the primary issue for us—even beyond copyright considerations—is (and I don’t mean to be flip here) remembering how the internet works.

First, on content

On the surface, the issue is that when paper goes away, so does how we’ve been built to operate. More...

I won’t pretend I have all the answers (or any really), but I do think that with a little critical thinking, together we can talk about practical, actionable steps that translate some of the advantages of small business/startup culture into enterprise business processes.

Applying Startup Speed and Flexibility

Given that key to rapid innovation is the ability to fail fast and fail cheap (a concept that applies to your career too), perhaps two of the most beneficial elements of startup culture are speed and flexibility. More...

[caption id="attachment_1760" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="image credit: DeaPeaJay"][/caption] [tweetmeme]As social business concepts emerge, there is a clear and growing divide between those companies that have embraced social modes of work and those that are still operating under the rigid rules of twentieth century enterprise. This of course has lead to all sorts of misguided and mostly useless debate about whether or not the shift to Enterprise 2.0 is important. But I'd argue that point is not whether or not social business models are "better" than traditional industrial models, nor is it about what's profitable right now. More...

[caption id="attachment_1719" align="aligncenter" width="440" caption="image credit: A. Drauglis Furnituremaker"][/caption] [tweetmeme]It's one thing to talk about how to leverage new social platforms to do business better. It's another to talk about shifting business models to adapt to the current state of the web. I think we're doing well to address the former. My RSS reader is brimming with shining examples of how to engage, execute and measure social media tactics. But the critical conversation that I don't hear as much about (and maybe it's because I'm looking in the wrong places) is about how to shift our business modles themselves to better fit into a world where networks are no longer the exception but the norm. More...

[tweetmeme]In a recent email, someone accused me of not being snarky enough lately. HA! You asked for it: Here they are, 10 steps to writing a popular blog post in no time flat:

1. Spend 2 minutes on Twitter and find a popular blog post on a hot-button issue.
2. Open your blogging platform and start ranting in response. Logic here: rant = passion and passion = popular.
3. If possible, make some audacious claim about Gen Y, or Gen X, or whatever generation you happen to be from. The more it inspires warm fuzzies or outright anger, the better.
4. Think about creating an easily digestible list. [Ah, irony]
5. Don't acknowledge the article that started your rant.

More...

[caption id="attachment_1680" align="aligncenter" width="440" caption="image credit: Helga Birna Jónasdóttir"][/caption] [tweetmeme]I'm talking to you, young, hip, fancy social media blogger/guru/maven. You get engagement, community management, and customer interaction. At least that's what the young pro blogs I'm reading suggest.

But what about the unsexy stuff?

Do you know your cost of new customer acquisition? Could you spout off five easy ways to increase average order size? Can you read a P&L statement? Can you quickly and easily demonstrate social media's value to the bottom line? How are you at using market research data to predict consumer behavior?

Consider this my formal and open call. More...

Someone recently told me that it's easy to be frustrated any job, "especially where you're at in you're career." The point: it's tough to effect change from the bottom up. The structure of business hierarchy means that See what's broken, no one takes the time to explain why x,y,z won't work So what's the choice? Play the game - use what you know about people to convince them the system needs to be changed Or venture out on your own and create your own structures. If you're so sure they're right, then they should work ther too, right? More...

http://www.lifewithoutpants.com/words-of-wisdom/big-world/ http://www.laurenafernandez.com/blog/competitive-agency-landscape-and-business-integrity/

[caption id="attachment_1641" align="aligncenter" width="440" caption="image credit: icathing"][/caption] Although I'm hesitant to proclaim that any traditional form of marketing or customer service is completely dead, the shifting social landscape has hallenged us to rethink even our most basic and deeply ingrained practices - like face to face customer service. Neal Rohrbach gives us a taste of what might be the future of customer service: Recently I've found myself on the road quite a bit between conferences and trade shows. It's really amazing how social media has blended into these trips, started relationships, continued conversations an on and on. More...