31Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Blog Post on Video: The Three A’s of Social Media Branding

Blogging, Branding, Facebook, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter
What's a social media practitioner to do in order to be heard loud and clear above the din of so much online activity? How do you as a marketer or a PR pro or perhaps even an intern who's been hired to build a constituency of friends, fans and followers command attention and respect for the brand you represent? Well, take it from a practitioner of another kind, a neighbor of mine who just happens to be a pediatrician, and be mindful of the three A's -- Ability, Affability and Availability. This “blog post on video" was recorded on August 16, 2009 at the Barron Fishing Access Site on Puffer Pond at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. It's an adaptation of a post I wrote earlier this year called “The…
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27Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Blog Post on Video: Five Questions to Ask Yourself about Social Media

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Facebook, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter
Before you decide to dip your toes in social media, take just a few minutes to answer the five questions asked in this short video that I recently recorded (with the help of my wife, Barbara, and two sons, Scott and Ben) during the Cargill family vacation on the island of Martha's Vineyard. If you can answer yes to at least a few of these questions, then you’re in a pretty good place, a position from which you can at least begin to immerse yourself in such relatively uncharted waters as the blogosphere, the Twitterverse, Facebook and the like. This "blog post on video," by the way, is an adaptation of a post I wrote earlier this year called "Five Important Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Use Social Media," which you…
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18Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Who Moved My Customers?

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media
To say that marketing has changed in the last few years would be to put it quite mildly.   Marketing has been rocked, shaken, stirred, knocked for a loop and turned completely upside down not just by the Internet, but by the emergence of social media as an informational, educational and conversational platform leveraged by the masses.   The authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto had it right when they said, among other things, that… “There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.” The cold, hard facts say that customers are simply not where they were as recently as the turn of this century...they're not waiting for the mail, reading the newspaper,…
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10Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Social Media is a Team Sport, Not a Solo Act

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media
  As someone who spends the better part of his days – and nights, too – either reading about, talking about or working with social media, I can speak from experience when I say that as much fun as it is to spend so much time on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other such online communications platforms, to make that time pay off is no easy task.   It’s true. Given the cacophony of content that’s being disseminated across the social web these days, anyone on the front line of their brand’s social media efforts knows they have their work cut out for them if they expect to command attention, engage constituents and win friends, fans and followers.   Not only does a social media practitioner need to be on call practically…
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28Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

The Importance of Getting Past the Social Media “Dip”

Blogging, Branding, Marketing, Social Media
If there’s one thing I enjoy almost as much as using social media in my day-to-day communications and marketing activities, it’s speaking about these relatively new online publishing tools to friends, colleagues and, frankly, anyone else who will listen to me. I’ve always liked sharing what I know with others, teaching, training, helping others get from point A to point B – regardless of the subject. But there’s something different about social media. There’s something radically transformational about it that you just wouldn’t understand – and be able to take advantage of – till you’ve actually used it yourself for a while.     If you ask me, the key to being successful with social media is patience, perseverance and pushing past the so-called “Dip,” a difficult stretch of time (invariably…
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14Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

Sleepless in Social Media

Blogging, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
At a conference on social media I attended earlier this year, one of the speakers asked the audience how many of us really had the time for social media. Proudly, albeit surprisingly, a large percentage of us raised our hands, thinking...of course, we had the time for social media. Blogs. Twitter. Facebook. A few minutes here, a few minutes there. Piece of cake. But the speaker had actually thrown us a curve ball, going on to make his point that none of us really had the time it took to engage in social media. We made the time. Like our colleagues and peers, we couldn’t help but be busy with quotidian demands on our work lives, too – commutes, meetings, phone calls and the like. Never mind our family time.…
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08Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

Meet Me at the Intersection of Social Media and Marketing

Blogging, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
While I’ve always believed in the principles and power of direct marketing, as soon as I started blogging in early 2004, I realized I had discovered something that could very well have a huge impact on the future of the industry in which I earned my livelihood. I'm no prognosticator, but I saw for myself what the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto had written in their groundbreaking book, that, among other things, "markets are conversations" and that “there are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone” and that "companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best…
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02Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

Retrospective: What I’ve Written about Social Media in the Last Year

Blogging, Branding, Cause-Related Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
While I haven’t posted much here on A New Marketing Commentator lately, I have been active in the blogosphere via Internet Marketing Strategies and Secrets, a blog that is published and written by the team at Nowspeed. I’ve written a number of long posts there, most about social media, something I’ve been preaching and practicing and incorporating into my everyday marketing activities – where and when appropriate, of course – like there’s no tomorrow. So as a way of kickstarting this long overdue re-launch of the blog that I reluctantly put on hiatus for so long, I thought I would share some of those posts with you here. If you have the time, reading through this retrospective of mine will give you an idea of what I’ve been up to lately and will, hopefully, help you start, or improve…
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25May 2009 by Bob Cargill

My Blog and My Career, Then and Now

Advertising, Blogging, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media
This blog, A New Marketing Commentator, was a labor of love of mine from February 17, 2004 to May 10, 2006. Since I signed off here more than three years ago, I have continued to write articles, essays, commentaries and blog posts on direct marketing, advertising, PR and social media, most recently as Creative Director at Nowspeed on our blog, Internet Marketing Strategies and Secrets.  I have also staked out my turf on both Twitter and Facebook, where I invite you to follow and friend me. So please...what you see here is by no means a complete and accurate reflection of what I'm up to nowadays. Everything from the sidebar to the masthead of this blog needs an update and a full makeover. I continue to keep A New Marketing Commentator public only as a way of illustrating my history in…
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