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SMBs, Goldfish and Social Media

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I’m watching the goldfish named Lucky my daughter won without permission at the school carnival that outlived his cousin and was rescued after sliding down the garbage disposal and now lives in the makeshift aquarium/flower vase sitting on my kitchen table. In spite of all these odds, Lucky lives.

Here’s what’s fascinating aside from all that – 30 minutes ago I sprinkled food flakes on top of the water. Fish still doesn’t know there’s food within easy access.

Is there an analogy here? Let’s use our creativity to find one…a goldfish is an analogy for _______ (please fill in the blanks). I’ll start…

The goldfish ensnared in a make-shift home is captive, flitting and fleeing from top to bottom and in circles seeking food and freedom. A small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) disengaged from social media is akin to the ensnared goldfish.

Social media has spawned new channels to distribute messaging, elevate branding, secure positioning. When social media food is sprinkled throughout the SMB’s integrated marketing program and systematically consumed via a top-down strategy, the ecosystem is in balance.

If an SMB is confused about social media actually being gourmet eats, the pathway to marketing public relations and social media is complex; engagement may fail.

SMBs should consider social media a strategic necessity, expect failure as the growth path is achieved through trial and error, then reap the benefits with a dessert morsel at the top.

How about you? Any tidbits to share?

Twitter’s Hidden Gifts

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I’ve been tweeting for a year. During that time, say about nine months when I got around the what-the-heck-is-this thing, I’ve encountered Twitter’s many hidden gifts. I’d like to share and ask whether you have others to add.

Obviously, you need to be a treasure hunter (especially now with more bots, spam and direct selling). Twitter is much like the racks at T.J. Maxx — it’s a hunt-and-peck gold pot deal. But the rainbow does bare fruit.

On Twitter, I promise, you can find:

  • Amazing network of intelligent peeps with whom to banter and exchange commentary.
  • Sense of community and a feeling you belong to a higher group (are we a clique?) who get it.
  • Treasure of information (caveat emptor!) behind the numerous links everyone tweets.
  • Quick way to garner immediate knowledge about any topic imaginable and ability to be at the front end of unfolding crises i.e. earthquakes, elections and the like.
  • Lists of people with your like interests within your profession or elsewhere from whom you can get opinions and fodder.
  • People like Gregg Morris. I’ve mentioned Gregg more than once in my few posts on this new blog, and there’s a reason why. He became my knight who rescued me from blogger IT hell and smoothed out my experience so these posts can come alive.  (I have far to go, and I know Gregg is a click away.)

My intention was to gift Gregg with an interview and help him promote his venture as a storyteller. We spoke for several hours, and the outcome was an exchange so rich with backward and forward insights, high intelligence, and an appreciation for the synergies of the past, present and future.  As a result, I plan a series of posts relating to and about Gregg; he gifted me with so much, he deserves more in return.

There’s no doubt your Twitter stream can be rich with hidden people gifts ala Gregg. As I develop more food for thought, look within your stream for exactly that. It’s not happenstance, you know; you need to give to get. And, when it does occur, the whole meaning of tweepship is defined anew.

Paint, Pizza and Social Media

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Look around the walls that confine you. How many layers of paint make up what you see? The very first layer of paint on the dry wall was primer followed by several coatings of tint. Color is intended to complement the core structure; instead, it does a good job of hiding it.

In Chicago, Lou Malnati’s, along with my other faves Nancy’s Pizza, Rosati’s, and Leona’s make pie — deep dish, can’t-get-anywhere-else Chicago ‘za. (Yes, I’m salivating.) Malnati’s offers a butter crust, among other delights. When the home-made Italian sauce zingy with oregano, basil, etc. is added along with the four-blend cheese not to mention the veg toppings (spinach, onion, tomato anyone?) and, and, and…who can taste the crust?

Social media is akin to paint and pizza. In North America, Internet usage penetration is 74.2 percent, and there are 1.73 billion Internet users around the world, according to Internet World Stats. To find the actual number of blogs, good luck. In a post two years ago on Blog Herald, estimates by Technorati suggested 112.8 million blogs. Add micro-blogging via Twitter, and Facebook, MySpace, with social networking on LinkedIn and a variety of other social media layers/levels applied daily (whew), and where the heck is the crust and dry wall?

In your business, rather than stacking bricks willy-nilly in the hopes of decorative art, focus on the foundation. Concentrate on several initial layers of basic messaging WITH A STRATEGY and build from there.  Social media can be dangerous, especially when a public relations practitioner or marketer is caught up in the bells-and-whistles frenzy to add more, more, more. “Less is more!” said my former boss, Jodee Stevens, founder and creative director of Cardthartic.

So, as you paint and dine on “salivacious” (I do a lot of word coining) Chicago ‘za, stay focused on the first layers. Over time, spurred by on-tap strategy, add the anchovies — or not.

Twitter & the Hash Tag

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As I toil to design this deal, I will attempt to delight with awesome lingo. Twitter will provide an array of topics. Tonight’s is about the awesome use of the # (hash tag). I’m following these several days #LMA10 — the Legal Marketing Association annual meeting in Denver.

For those not in the know, when you tweet, add that hash tag to each tweet, and it’s captured along with other tweets throughout the conference.

Today I gathered all the negatives about the event — WiFi non-existent, SRO, no break-out rooms listed, no photography, etc.

In addition, I got some great points relating to social media, alternative fee arrangements, branding, and public relations in law firms.

The most interesting, yet troubling, point came from a public relations session where folks were told that social media is a fad. Legal marketers need to look for the next place to hang their hats.

Really?

Well, I’ve been tweeting an entire year, and this “fad” shows no sign of slowing down. Coming from an industry traditional slow to adopt, I’m not sure where that statement originated.

Fad or not, social media is here to stay — very alive and well. If you’ve got any thoughts direct from the legal marketer perspective, please share!