Convo at the PowWow posts, articles, and infographics

What You Need to Know About Social Celebrity Endorsement [CONVO]

April 11, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 337 views

Celebrity endorsement used to mean attempting to have some of celebrities' popularity transferred to the product being pitched. The message was, "I like this, you like me, so you should like this, too." J.R. Johnson is a veteran entrepreneur and founder of the social travel site and app Trippy. Trippy is using a new model for celebrity endorsement that's more participatory — for the brand, for the celebrities, and for their respective social connections —than standard endorsement advertising. [read more]

Customer Engagement is a Multi-Channel Proposition [CONVO]

April 4, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 874 views

Banafsheh Ghassemi

According to Banafsheh Ghassemi, VP Marketing at American Red Cross, relying too heavily on sentiment and other analyses from social media can create blind spots for marketers in our multi-channel world. We need to be listening on all the channels in which we engage our customers. In this conversation, she shares with us her perspectives on the integration of business strategies and emerging technologies, such as sentiment analysis. [read more]

Convo - How Turnstone Uses Relevancy, Consistency and Kapost for Successful Content Marketing

March 28, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 340 views

Emily Bosma

In today's convo, we look at how one company's blog-centric content marketing strategy benefits from solid vision and good tools. I speak with Emily Bosma, Digital Media & Content Anthropologist at Turnstone Furniture and Mike Lewis, President of content marketing platform Kapost. Turnstone is using Kapost to help manage its blog — and bloggers — to improve workflow and analyze post effectiveness. [read more]

Pepsi and Maximizing Blogger Activation by Focusing on the Power Middle

March 21, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 1,134 views

RTimages/shutterstock.com

When Pepsi's Tropicana wanted to give a social lift to its recently launched Trop50, it faced the challenge of creating advocacy at scale among bloggers as part of its Trop50 True Resolutions Facebook experience. Working with Social Chorus, Tropicana focused on the Power Middle of relevant bloggers. The earned and paid efforts succeeded in activating 174 bloggers who produced 210 blog posts and over 36,000 social actions across multiple social media platforms. [read more]

Facebook App Contest Helps Teens Confront Cyberbullying

March 16, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 342 views

Cyberbullying is a challenging issue for teens and young adults. Reachout.com — an online support community for teens and young adults — has just launched the "Don’t Just Stand By" teen Facebook app developer competition to help provide information about cyberbullying and encourage action. In today's convo, I speak with Anastasia Goodstein, Director of Digital Programs at the Inspire USA Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Reachout.com. [read more]

An Insider's View of Crisis Comms and Social Media in the C-Suite [CONVO]

March 14, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 174 views

The air can often get very thin in the executive conference rooms of large corporations. How are those at the C-level maintaining their brands' reputations and dealing with crisis as news cycles continue to shorten because of Twitter and emerging platforms? And are there lessons for small- and medium sized businesses to be found in their travails? Bill Wohl, former CCO of HP, discloses the answers. [read more]

You Can't Do Proper Engagement on a Skype Video Call [CONVO]

March 6, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 132 views

Brands need to develop ways to manage their communications in the context of short news cycles and near-instant social media sharing. In this convo, I speak with Toby Webb, founder and chairman of Ethical Corporation, who offers some actionable advice on reputation preservation and crisis management. [read more]

Social Media is a Mandate from Your Customers [CONVO]

March 1, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 322 views

In this convo, Alex Schott, Entergy's Manager, Social Media & Multimedia, describes a framework for managing the weather conversation — preparing before, reporting during and solving after the storm. He also shares how the company integrates broadcast and social media to reach as many customers as possible during a storm. Crisis communications is only one element of Entergy's expanding social media activities intended to provide information, improve support capabilities and, in time, sell energy services. [read more]

Social Media Strategies That Work for New York Life [CONVO]

February 24, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 689 views

In this insightful conversation, Gregg Weiss, AVP, Social Media at New York Life Insurance Company, shares how it's imperative for his company to be actively engaged in social media. [read more]

Giving and Getting the Most Out of Your Brand's Cause Marketing [CONVO]

February 22, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 472 views

One of the benefits of social media changing the nature of brands' conversations with their customers is the increase in many companies' philanthropic efforts. In this conversation, I speak with author Rachel Armbruster, known for her work as director of development at the Lance Armstrong Foundation during the iconic yellow wristband campaign. We look at the landscape at the intersection of brand marketing and corporate giving, starting with reasons why companies should be motivated to develop deep partnerships with charities. [read more]

Can Small Business Benefit from a New Loyalty Program? [CONVO]

February 15, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 231 views

Andres Mendoza

Boutique Loyalty is a way for local, community-based stores to outsource a loyalty program that pools resources for cross-marketing and customer retention. Consumers will be able to earn rewards when they search for participating merchants in their own community and when traveling. [read more]

How Will You Be Filling Your Online Cosmic Cart? (CONVO)

February 10, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 201 views

There are a number of product tagging and recognition applications for web text, pictures and video on websites. And there are several “universal shopping carts” for making purchases on multiple sites during the course of one spree. Alex Adelman is hoping his Cosmic Cart will differentiate itself from the pack with both its technology and business model. The platform has been designed to address small businesses that need rapid, non-technical implementation and are reluctant to put money up front. [read more]

Cross Platform Marketing Amplifies Jackson Hewitt Campaign [CONVO]

February 8, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 338 views

David Koroghlian

This season, Jackson Hewitt, working with agency 22squared, is carefully coordinating all elements — TV, print and multiple social channels — to be heard amid the roar of the significantly larger media spend of its competitor, H & R Block. In this conversation, Jackson Hewitt's David Koroghlian and Chris Tuff of 22squared reveal how they have achieved success that has, according to the companies, exceeded their expectations. [read more]

Building a Brand for Gen Y [CONVO]

February 3, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 722 views

Josh Reed (left) took his idea for a clothing line for Millennials to Curt Cuscino (right) and his team at HypeLife Brands. In addition to creating an identity that resonates, the agency was charged with assisting with product development, distribution and social media presence. In this conversation with Josh and Curt, we explore the process of creating the Everyday Noble Clothing brand and bringing it to market. [read more]

Moving Complaints from Social Media to Resolution [CONVO]

January 31, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 241 views

Most companies are acutely aware of the need to rapidly address publicly posted complaints on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels. Brandsclub, a Brazilian online retailer of luxury goods, selected tools and developed a workflow that best fits the needs of its customers and internal resources. In this convo, we hear from Jardel Appelt, Head of Social Media, about Brandsclub’s technique: Automated detection and assignment to dedicated customer services representatives when content surfaces containing specific keywords, plus manual assessment of the balance of the “social media chaos." [read more]

Why is Inbound Marketing So Effective? [CONVO]

January 27, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 818 views

Laura Fitton, Inbound Marketing Evangelist at HubSpot, sees Inbound Marketing as composed of three key processes: get found, convert and analyze. In this conversation, Fitton presents two brief case studies illustrating the power of Inbound Marketing. We also contrast Inbound Marketing with its cousins, Outbound Marketing and Content Marketing, and examine where Inbound Marketing is headed. [read more]

Orbit Facebook Contest Driven by Fan Brand Engagement [Convo]

January 25, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 523 views

In this conversation, I speak with Jennifer Jackson Luth, Senior Manager of North American Corporate Affairs at Wrigley, about a Facebook application for Orbit gum that captures and amplifies fan brand engagement. [read more]

What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Engagement? [CONVO]

January 20, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 1,327 views

Mitch Lieberman and Neil Glassman explore how the term “engagement” is applied in the context of social media, as well as whether better employee engagement leads to better customer engagement. [read more]

Why Nuts.Com Won't Bite for ICANN's New Generic Top-Level Domains

January 17, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 147 views

This week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened the application window for its new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) program. The potential will exist for companies to set aside or supplement their use of the more familiar top-level domain extensions, such as .com and .org, with ".itsbrandname". [read more]

Is Social Media ROI a Ridiculous Concept? [CONVO]

January 11, 2012 by Neil Glassman
with 1,613 views

In this conversation, Dennis and I explore how to assess the effectiveness of social media marketing in the current absence of measurement standards, the often false attribution of purchases to buyers' last measured action and other topics related to the complexity of assigning metrics to word-of-mouth marketing. [read more]