What a Runway Model Taught Me About Social Media

When it comes to the world of modeling, internet models often get a bad name. However, there are plenty of highly successful models who managed to get runway work, makeup expos, and even print work through use of social media. Some may consider it a form of internet modeling, while others consider it to be a simply internet-savvy way of networking with people in the fashion world. Whatever the name for these women and men may be, they have some very good approaches that just about every business owner should try to incorporate in their own social media campaign.

Here are some tips for using social media like a model. Models are not only known for their looks, but their personalities as well. What makes businesses any different? Everyone associates businesses with certain characteristics, so why not emphasize them in your social media campaign. Think of Groupon’s goofy articles that they add to the bottom of every page, or even Apple’s sleek and edgy social media appeal. Use your company’s personality to speak for you.
A smart model knows when to drum up some drama, and when to keep quiet. One of the best examples of this that I have ever seen in social media was when a friend who owned a local business had a shoplifter come in to his store and steal a several hundred dollar coat. The community which he catered to was exceptionally tight knit. After a very quick description of the shoplifter, along with a very well-worded tirade about how violated he felt after being a victim of theft for the first time, the thief was found by a regular of the store and apprehended. The coat was returned, and all was well. On the other hand, a model who was cheated out of a magazine tearsheet let out a rant, and the community that she belonged to immediately shot her down, calling her a “crybaby.” The bottom line is to pick your battles wisely in the realm of social media. It can serious harm your company if you choose the wrong time to strike at someone who cheated you out of money.

In the world of modeling, especially alternative modeling, there is a very often repeated phrase that is said to newcomers, “Don’t let anyone take a shot that you wouldn’t want someone to see.” Believe it or not, this is very sound advice for a lot of things, including social media. Don’t ever post something that will put you in a bad light with customers. You will end up regretting it sooner or later.

More often than not, people check into models’ updates to find out their shoot schedules, where they are appearing, and whether or not they kept their hair the same length or color. Businesses which are constantly changing, such as nightclubs, restaurants, bars, and theaters should use a lot of their social media work as a way to keep people in the loop about the latest happenings.

Similarly, aspiring models and actresses use the Internet to connect with people, and to talk them into shooting with them. It’s in their best interest to reach out to others and network with anyone that they can find. Not enough businesses take this very important cue. Instead of being the passive, content-churning social media monster that rarely gets the leads and results you want, get people involved. Reply to their comments, and also make an effort to engage them in chats. You want a community, not a zombie horde.

If there is anything that models are known for, it’s images. Models are extremely smart when it comes to advertising using beautiful layouts, photographs, and just about everything else. In a world where everyone is judged on their looks, their hair color, their weight, and their clothes, it makes all the sense in the world to advertise by showing yourself at your very best. Strangely enough, some businesses don’t think about things this way. The bottom line is that if you make your social media campaign pretty, or at least wrap it in a nice package, people will be more likely to be interested in it.
Believe it or not, most of the models you’ll ever speak to are actually very smart. When it comes to networking, people skills, and also social media, the most successful models you’ll meet could often double as gurus in these very fields. So, if you want your business to flourish, it might be time to start posing as a model when it comes to your social networking decisions.

Guest blogger: Osyen Black. Photo credit from Flickr.

Worst Social Media Marketer of The Year Award

Meet Jim. He works for Badhire Pharmaceuticals.

Full disclosure upfront: Jim is a figment of my imagination. He is also a near perfect example of what not to do as a social media marketer. Perhaps you’ve met Jim. He may even be sitting a few cubicles down from you. He is your company’s Chief Social Media Ninja Guru Super Hero Rock Star.

Jim believes that he has just won an award for his stellar social media marketing prowess (you’re in on the joke) and has been asked to talk about social media best practices for the benefit of his audience —that’s you!

Here is an extract from his speech:

“The best way to deal with negative Facebook and Twitter comments is to delete the ones you catch as soon as possible. If your schedule is too busy to monitor social media feedback, just ignoring criticisms will suffice. Ignorance is bliss, so deny any mistakes your company makes. Use malicious software to access and exploit private information. Another great way to invade customer’s privacy is via non-targeted spam marketing. If a customer tries to interact with you, anger is an appropriate response. If a customer keeps nagging you, dropping the F-bomb should get your point across. The recipe for getting on the first page of Google is simple: use hidden text or links, cross-link sites to inflate its perceived value, use keyword stuffing, excessive outbound links and duplicate content. Pretend to be a customer and endorse your own products and services to effectively build brand loyalty. Some of you are numbers people, so lets talk about the best way to allocate your budget: 50% should be spent on buying Facebook fans and the remaining 50% on getting false testimonials, and remember talk is cheap, so over promise and under deliver.”

—Jim Blackhat, Chief Social Media Ninja Guru Super Hero Rock Star

Photo credit: Hubspot

Help Jim out by suggesting some additional social media marketing activities.

Is CherryCard The Answer to Gaining Customer Loyalty?

Okay, here is the scenario: you walk into your favourite restaurant, get seated, order a killer entree—I recommend the smoke sable fish with peashoots. Alright, I veered of track. I’m back. The bill comes to the table and is accompanied by a red card courtesy of a relationship between your restaurant and CharityCard. The card states that you have earned $0.25 to give to the charities of your choice.

In summary, you collect CherryCards at your business of choice, cash in your CherryCards online, and donate money to the cause of your choice.

Now on to the business side of things, two things are happening here: (1) You are creating goodwill / customer loyalty, and (2) your customer feels a sort of warm cozy feeling knowing that they have contributed money to a charity they’re excited about. Can you part with $0.25 per transaction? What about $0.10? How will this effect your brand image?

There is a 21st solution to giving that has the potential to give this program sticking powers beyond the obvious reasons. Well, it relates to a relationship between the virtual and social media worlds. You can sign-in with Facebook and engage your friends on the website. There is a modest gaming component—when you compete against your friends—that makes donating  fun.

What potential could a program like this have relating to giving in the future? Will the benefits of goodwill and customers loyalty outweigh the costs involved in doles out a fixed amount of change per transaction? Has anyone given this site a whirl? Any thoughts?

New! The Social Media Monthly Magazine

There is a new magazine on the block and it’s called The Social Media Monthly. That’s right. It’s about the digital world of social media and it’s delivered in print format. Shaking your head? Print, OMG, no! Social media is a wildly dynamic world or restless users that demand mealtime solutions. This magazine Can this magazine survive given the restless users of social media that demand online, real-time solutions.

Editor and publisher, Robert Fine, feels that print is not dead and that “electronic media hasn’t quite replaced all of the intimacy you can get with a printed book or magazine” and social media is not an exception. Initially, the word intimacy might come across as a trifle hokey, but from curly myself up on my couch while flipping through the magazine while stopping to feel  each page to rolling it up under my arm on my way to my local coffee shop, I got! I understand what Robert means when he associates magazines with intimacy.

There are some tactile and interactive features in their launch issue that are a value-added feature for its readers. You can peel off a reusable wall decal on the cover and peel a card off an ad, visit CherryCard and donate 10 cents to your charity of choice.  Many of the ads take a minimalistic approach and most include a QR code in hopes of getting users to interact with the brand.

I put on my critical hat and feel that the article on Empire Avenue takes up a disporporionely large about of space–nine pages worth! That said, if the numerous parallels the founder draws between their Social Stock Market and Facebook and Twitter are accurate, maybe the length of the article is warranted.

The following are a sample of articles you can expect to read in the magazine’s launch issue:

• Shifting social media into social transformation.
• Data and context – The road to good decisions.
• Looking for a job? Get on board with social recruiting or get left behind.
• Brand advocacy in a socially networked world.

A selection of contributors include Tonia Ries – founder of Modern Media and The Realtime Report, Rory Cooper–Director of Communications for The Heritage Foundation and Duleepa Wijayawardhana– founder of Empire Avenue’s.

The article that really pops for me is Data and Context – The Road to Good Decisions by Shelly Krammer and Wendy Scherer that stresses the importance of understanding context to frame data and writes that “data combined with context is powerful” and concludes that “data is where it starts, context is the midpoint [and] great decisions are what follow”. The buzzword to take away from this article is clearly context.

Robert’s goal for The Social Media Monthly is to “create something that… you’ll look forward to receiving in your mailbox every month” and for this social media sponge, that magazine has done such that. It is the first magazine that I’ve read from front to back, including the advertisements!

What have you heard so far about this magazine? Do you think it will be successful? Are you planning on subscribing to this magazine. I would love to hear from you!

Little Things Important to Social Media

Courtesy of my accomplished guest blogger Scott Spjut

Turns out, it’s all little things. Social media isn’t really about blitzes or viral marketing or big online campaigns, at least not for your average small business owner or blog. As much as we would love to have a huge marketing department to invest money and time into some elaborate, interactive social media campaign, it is not beneficial for all companies.

Instead, social media is about a consistent, dedicated approach. It’s about doing the little things, day in and day out, to provide value to your past, present, and potential customers and readers. While this approach may take a while and won’t usually bring with it huge spikes in traffic, it’s how you build a strong foundation and social loyalty.

People who see value in what you’re adding to the conversation will Like, follow, retweet, and otherwise share what you’re doing – and they are likely to do it consistently. Once they realize the contribution you’re making to their lives, they will not unlike, unfollow, or abandon you.

So with Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks, it’s important to do a little bit each and every day – and at different times each day (since you’ll hopefully have followers from around the world). It may be something related to your industry, and it may not be. It may be self-promotional and it may be about someone else. (Remember that anything too self-promotional or spammy is going to lose more people than it gains.) Regardless of what you’re presenting to your network, it should be something they can take value from.

The most popular websites on the Internet have built up a huge following by consistently providing what their readers want. The most successful online businesses have built up their brand by doing the little things each and every day. The most effective companies interact with the individual – by providing one-on-one customer service or answering each question in a timely manner – and don’t just focus on the masses.

Social media is about the little things. It may just take a few minutes each day to respond to a few posts or a few tweets, but it can make a huge difference to your followers, friends, and network.

Your goals don’t have to be small, but you need to do the little things in order to reach them.

Scott Spjut is a writer and editor who has been featured in various magazines, newspapers and websites – including Newsweek, the Washington Post, CBS News and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Scott currently works with Professional Marketing International helping people change their lives.

Photo credit: Maria Reyes-McDavis

What are Community Managers and How Exactly Do They Spend Their Days?

What does the Community Manager do in my company? I don’t have a Community Manager; do I really need one? Would I make a good Community Manager?

It helps to know some of the common misconceptions about Community Management [courtesy of Blaise Grimes-Viort, a hat tip to you] to effectively answer these questions. In a nutshell, here are eight misconceptions about Community Management:

1. It can be done by any Tom, Dick or Harry.
2. They use their mouth piece to laze the day away.
3. They need to be well known to be effective.
4. Their work’s ROI can’t be measured.
5. Their job is to sell a product / service.
6. All of their work is done online.
7. They’re forces to be reckoned with, not unlike Stalin. [really?]
8. They’re 9 to 5′ers.

Now that we’re working with a clean slate, allow me to take you through a portal, Being John Malkovich style, into the heads of three different Community Managers. Lets assume that Community Managers do a broad range of things and often differ from company to company (fair assumption?). In that spirit, we’ll go and take a peak at three different Community Managers that each work for different companies. Lets go.

Scott Drummond, Community Manager @ Optus

• Manages his inbox. He spends a fair chunk of his time here. He uses Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero approach to manage his inbox by compartmentalizing his emails into actionable tasks: Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer and Do.
• Monitors key metrics related to brand health and shares any significant information with various stakeholders.
• Reviews and tweaks scheduled content that has been sourced throughout the company that is destined for various social media platforms.
• Attends meetings with stakeholders, customer services team members, etc. about things such as strategies to enhance existing relationships.
• Addresses strategic issues such as how to better engage communities.
• Uses reporting tools to share insight from communities to employees.

Get a full breakdown of Scott’s day.

Lee Odden, Social Media Community Manager, Top Rank

• Respond to company blog comments. He also uses a blog comment management tool to effectively reply to comments.
• Visit Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn related to brand health and shares any significant information with various stakeholders.
• Monitors news feeds and shares relevant news articles and blogs, i.e., via Twitter and creating blog posts.
• Search for opportunities to engage with people relevant to the industry.
• Monitors social dashboard and responds to information when necessary.

Get a full breakdown of Lee’s day.

Leighann F., Community Manager @ Yelp

• Makes lots of phone calls to business owners, marketing partners, etc.
• Emails possible venues for events.
• Participates in meetings such as with people in the PR department.
• Writes reviews on places of interest such as restaurant reviews.
• Monitors and participates in communities by engaging people on on various topics of interest and sets out the welcome mat for new ‘yelpers’.
• Hangs out with / stay connected with the community in the offline world. They go to bar crawls, new restaurants, etc.Get answers to more questions related to Leighann’s job.

Top 10 Things You Can Buy For $5

Image via CrunchBase

Have you heard of a website called Fiverr? It provides a meeting place for people to buy and sell their products and services (mostly services) for – your guessed it – five bucks. You can select categories from social marketing and business to fun and bizarre. A little caveat, not all services are entirely ethical, there are however some real jems.

Allow me to entertain you with an overview of some of the more colourful, perhaps less than savoury gigs. Need to breakup with your girlfriend / boyfriend? You can have someone else do it for you for $5. Want to meet someone in prison? $5. Want to find out if your new mate is a major sleeze, porno addict or felon? Fiverr.com at your service.

Time to sift through the rift raft and get you spending the best five dollars of your life. In that spirit, the top 10 things you can get for $5 from Fiverr.com follows, but don’t just take my words for it, each of the gigs are rate based on their past performance. Drum roll please… for five dollars you get:

1. A romantic gift for your loved one. Have someone hold up a sign in Times Square in New York with a message of your choice, such as ‘I love ____’ or ‘____, will you marry me?’.

2. A professional voice over for your commercial, podcast introduction, etc. for a radio vet that has 10 years under his belt.

3. Your CSS browser issue fixed, including writing new CSS.

4. Your own customized cartoon version of you. This seller does a remarkable job of making your cartoon look realistic.

5. A customized computer font created from your handwriting.

6. Four customized logos for your business.

7. A fashion editorial about your personal style.

8. A customized 30-second song about anything you want and get it posted on YouTube.

9. A video of a funny looking puppet that sings a special song for you / greeting such as a song for your loved one for Valentine’s Day.

10. A customized design of the landing page for your Facebook page.

Have you tried any other services on Fiverr.com that you recommend? If you have, I would love to hear from you!