A Weblog and Newsroom for Simple Marketing Now LLC, a marketing communications consultancy focused on simplifying customer interactions with social media and content marketing.
Columbia Business School Alumni Club of NY Holds 2010 Elections
Whittemore Elected to Board of Directors
Kinnelon, NJ – The Columbia Business School Alumni Club of NY (CBSAC/NY) held its 2010 Elections for officers and directors on June 21, 2010. Christine B. Whittemore, chief simplifier of Simple Marketing Now LLC, has been elected to the board of directors for a two year term expiring May 31, 2012. She had previously served out the remaining year of Geoffrey Southworth CBS ’74 which ended May 31, 2010.
Whittemore ’93 joins Mary Reilly ’93, Craig Evans ’81, Penny Hammond ’02, Stephane Goldsand ’01, Dan McCarthy ’87, Rafael Rodas ’05, Joe Pucci ’05, Edward Rashba ’04, Frank Graziano ’82, Deborah Sanders ’91, Stacy Gilstrap ’04, and Bruce Crawford ’86 on the CBSAC/NY board of directors.
Candidates for director positions are selected from club members who have been actively involved in club operations and are graduates of the Columbia Business School. Whittemore has been active in the CBSAC/NY’s Membership Committee since 2002 and has served as Chair of the Greeters Subcommittee since 2004. In that role, she coordinates greeters for club events with the goal of ensuring peace-of-mind for the event organizer, a welcoming presence for event attendees and total focus for the event presenter.
"In recognition of her thoughtful leadership and outstanding organizational skills", says Dan McCarthy, retiring President of the CBSAC/NY, “we are delighted to welcome Christine to the Board for a new, full two year term. Her record of demonstrated commitment and exceptional service are invaluable for our all volunteer organization. Congratulations, Christine!”
Directors of the CBSAC/NY have a fiduciary responsibility to oversee the proper management of the New York alumni club. The club’s mission is to strengthen the alumni network and to serve as a positive and valuable resource to the alumni of the Columbia Business School. The board of directors also selects the club executive committee, consisting of two co-presidents, treasurer and corporate secretary.
For more information about the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (CBSAC/NY), please visit http://www.cbsacny.org.
For more information about Simple Marketing Now LLC, contact chief simplifier Whittemore at CBWhittemore@SimpleMarketingNow.com or visit the Simple Marketing Now website [http://SimpleMarketingNow.com] and companion weblog & newsroom – Simple Marketing Blog [http://SimpleMarketingBlog.com].
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About Simple Marketing Now LLC
Simple Marketing Now is a marketing communications consultancy. It helps organizations integrate social media and content marketing with traditional marketing to improve the customer experience and strengthen brands. For more information, visit http://SimpleMarketingNow.com.
About The Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York
The Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (CBSAC/NY) was founded by alumni for alumni in 1975. It acts as a unique educational, business networking, and social resource for all Columbia Business School graduates, students and faculty in New York City and the surrounding tri-state region. For more information, visit http://www.cbsacny.org.
"Please join us for a very informative panel about social media, for the corporate marketer, the small business owner, and the “newbie” social media user. This will be the first of a seven–part educational series of social media events which will cover the full spectrum of issues regarding social media (e.g., how to utilize it to promote business and build a brand/franchise, personal branding for your career, measuring ROI , etc.). At the end of the event, volunteers will be stationed at the Samsung computers for hands-on show-and-tell."
It took place at The Samsung Experience at 10 Columbus Circle in New York City, the ultimate in digital experience and presentation spaces - and perfect for hands-on and 1:1 consulting sessions.
The CBS AC/NY event featured four seasoned and successful entrepreneurs - Dorian Benkoil, Marshall Sponder, Jeremy Merrin and Lawrence Sherman - who actively use social media in their businesses. They described how they have applied the tools of social media to support their business goals .
They share with us here recommendations on how to best use social media for business and entrepreneurship.
Dorian Benkoil, our moderator, has an impressive background in the media business creating strategies and leading teams to develop multiple new content and revenue streams across platforms, attract and retain millions of users and generate explosive growth in industry blogs, memberships, email newsletters, video and paid content, resulting in millions of dollars in revenue. Think mediabistro.com, ABCNews.com, Fairchild Publications, CNET.com...
He's also an award-winning journalist [i.e., a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent for ABC News, Newsweek, and The Associated Press], an expert commentator on media and a regular contributor to the Poynter Institute’s e-media Tidbits. He blogs at mediaflect.com, writes for Bob Garfield’sThe Chaos Scenario blog, and has written for Jack Myers Media Business Report, the Economist Intelligence Unit, PaidContent.org and been quoted widely in leading publications around the world.
Dorian's company, Teeming Media, is a New York based strategic digital media business and editorial consultancy focused on helping companies manage their digital media and events toward specific business objectives.
Here are Dorian's words of social media for business wisdom:
1. Align your marketing communications/outreach strategy with your social media. SM are big tools in the arsenal.
2. Assign someone with enough “heft” to properly execute number one. (Don’t leave your social media to the youngest person in the office, just because they’re young and use Facebook.)
3. Listen. Remember to take very seriously what folks are saying.
4. Respond. See # 3.
5. Just do it. Then measure, and adjust.
Marshall Sponder is a Social Media and Analytics Consultant and Founder of www.WebmetricsGuru.com – a blog renowned in the industry for its insights into analytics and social media. Marshall understands data having worked at Insights Group at MONSTER Worldwide, Inc. and IBM.com. His clients range from award-winning agencies such as Porter Novelli and Converseon to businesses such as Havana Central. He also co-leads the Meetup Group: NY Data Stories. Definitely read his blog if you want to better understand social media monitoring and tracking, and how to make business sense out of analytics.
Marshall's recommendations focus on his area of expertise: monitoring, tracking, aligning goals to tactics and measuring to ensure that your social media campaign delivers business results:
1. Before starting a social media campaign (or social media monitoring of the campaign) determine what your business goals are and write them down.
2. Create campaigns and marketing tactics that align with your stated business goals (i.e., be able to explain how and why they align) while still in conceptual stage (don't implement yet - just consider the campaigns)
3. Assess paid/free tools for analytics and monitoring; I suggest auditing the business goals, campaigns and tactics against the willingness and ability to monitor and track. For example, what do we need to change in order to be able to track a business goal that becomes a campaign that employs tactics.
- Determine if there is enablement budget to put those "hooks" in place to monitor.
- Choose the set of tools that work the best for your organizational needs (i.e., do you need daily reporting, historical database, geo local targeting - etc.).
4. Assess what additional training might be required by staff to act on the information collected by the tools - budget for training and enablement work here.
5. Put campaigns into place, ideally, once you're able to track them with analytics and listening systems which will then give you an ROI type of number you can work with.
6. Report weekly or monthly, depending on your organization's cadence and tune your campaigns and tactics as needed.
[Pictured here: Cecilia Pineda Feret and Jeremy Merrin]
Jeremy Merrin, EMBA ’00, is Founder and CEO of Havana Central, a New York City based restaurant and bar with three locations. Havana Central captures the essence of "classic Cuban food with the energy of old Havana" and has embraced the tools of social media to build a loyal customer base. He works with Marshall Sponder for social media analytics and monitoring. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur he was Executive VP of Business Development at iParty.com.
Jeremy recommends the following:
1. Do as much testing and experimentation as possible
2. Start recording and keeping statistics on each part of your program
3. Begin to analyze the statistics as early as possible
4. As a company owner, I need to remember that this is a very new field that is rapidly changing. Nevertheless, I stay focused on learning how to monetize our efforts spent in this area.
5. Bite off only as much as you can chew. Only add on additional platforms when you have the bandwidth to handle them.
Lawrence Sherman, FACME, CCMEP, brings an unusual perspective to the discussion of social media for business: that of medical educator. He is a medical educational professional known worldwide for using new and unique approaches such as social media in medical education. He works for Prova Education, an evidence-based continuing medical education organization for physicians and healthcare professionals, as senior vice president of educational strategy. You can get a taste for Lawrence's take on social media and medicine via this 29 min video clip.
Lawrence's advice consists of the following:
1. Know your audience(s) and their needs and preferences. Sometimes you have to ask them!
2. Think about where in your business model social media can fit - in medical education we can assess educational needs, promote educational programs, and create private environments for assessment of impact.
3. Many times the users don't know what they don't know or what they can do, so you often have to point things out to them. Social media fits many communications needs but may not be obvious to them.
4. You can't treasure it if you can't measure it, so design social media strategies and uses that have measurable objectives.
Additional Social Media For Business & Entrepreneurship Resources:
If you attended the Social Media For Business & Entrepreneurship Event, you received a reference sheet listing contact information and additional sources for social medial information. I list them here.
Many thanks to the CBSAC/NY Social Media Committee, Sobel Media Events, a digital media connections company, and Samsung with special thanks to Cecilia Pineda Feret ’92 and Bill Sobel [Twitter: @bsobel226] for making this event happen.
Special thanks, too, to Dorian Benkoil, Marshall Sponder, Jeremy Merrin and Lawrence Sherman for so graciously sharing their wisdom in this post. I really enjoyed meeting Brad Jobling, Ben Bloom, Mo Krochmal, Amy Vernon and Carmina Perez.
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If you attended, what were your takeaways? What ideas and questions do our panelists' recommendations trigger?
The discussion in the comments section has been robust. Perhaps you'd like to add to it?
Here's how the post ends:
"Humility, respect for customers, a willingness to appreciate individuals within corporate walls as well as outside, a desire to improve and truly delight, proper training, openness to a variety of perspectives, a willingness to empower and be human and a strong desire to listen. All characteristics of a social customer-service company.
Content marketing, the art of communicating with customers and prospects without selling, is a form of non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching products or services, a marketer delivers consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers. In turn, buyers are more informed, and., they ultimately reward organizations with their business and loyalty.
The Content Marketing Institute focuses on content strategy, content creation, content promotion and distribution, content management, and content measurement and analysis. The site features a daily blog that shares how-to tips on executing content marketing, samples of great content and case studies of how companies are executing their content marketing strategies.
“The Content Marketing Institute offers marketers and business owners how-to information about content marketing in any venue: online, mobile, in-person and print,“ says Joe Pulizzi, CMI founder, co-author of THE handbook on content marketing, Get Content Get Customers “Thanks to expert contributors such as Christine, the CMI is able to equip marketers with practical DIY advice that they can implement into their overall marketing programs."
About Simple Marketing Now LLC
Simple Marketing Now is a marketing communications consultancy that provides organizations with the right combination of traditional marketing and new and digital tools to improve the customer experience and build brand. For more information, visit http://SimpleMarketingNow.com.
About Junta42
Junta42, the independent authority on content marketing, brings clients and vendors together through its custom publishing service, replacing the lengthy RFP process. Project posting is free and includes custom magazines, content microsites, blogs, white papers, enewsletters and over 20 other custom content project categories.
Many thanks to Chris Ramey, president of Affluent Insights and chairman of The Luxury Marketing Council Florida, and Victoria Cerrone from Bobosart, who invited me to present "Flooring the Consumer: Developing Community and Delivering Wow!" at the April 28, 2010 Luxury Marketing Council in Orlando.
Here's how Chris described the presentation in his meeting invitation:
It's a wow or woe world for marketers.
Women, who make or influence over 80% of purchase decisions, are rethinking their relationships with brands, products and services. They're searching for meaningful relationships. Are you prepared to serve them? As their purses slowly open again it's imperative to provide a community to which they have an affinity. Christine will share the best of the best, and then discuss how you can develop your community and deliver Wow! to ensure your success.
In this presentation, I address many of the points that I write about in Flooring The Consumer, my marketing blog about the consumer retail experience and marketing to women. These are also themes that I've developed in my Flooring The Consumer column with Floor Covering Weekly. We have so many opportunities for building relationships with our customers when we carefully craft a memorable brand or retail experience that truly focuses on our consumers' needs.
I'm particularly honored that, as a result of my experience with The Luxury Marketing Council, I have become a member of the distinguished Luxury Marketing Council Florida Fellows. Here's more:
The Luxury Marketing Council Florida Fellowship was created to recognize those who have demonstrated distinction in the luxury segment and to The Luxury Marketing Council Florida. Elevation to Luxury Marketing Council Florida Fellowship requires and acknowledges:
Professional achievement
The highest level of ethics
Respect bestowed by colleagues
Leadership and mentorship across categories
Open sharing of knowledge, research and insight for the advancement of effective marketing and seat-holders’ business acumen
Thank you, Chris and Victoria, for this honor!
Thanks, too, for the opportunity for insightful conversation and questions about the importance of listening carefully to customers to develop a loyal community and deliver consistent Wow!
Are you ready for Advanced Twitter and How to Make Sense of Twitter for Business? TalkFloor's Dave Foster and I are continuing with our special #TalkFloor social media series and ready to discuss that very subject. You can participate with us via Twitter as you listen to the recorded interviews.
Dave's Twitter handle is@DaveTalkFloorand mine is @cbwhittemore. Consider following us. Feel free to practice some of what we discuss. If you want to Tweet us questions, simply use #TalkFloor and the '@' to direct the question to us. I'm listening!
Dave's introduction to this interview reads as follows:
Christine Whittemore – All About Social Networking - Part 3 Christine Whittemore, Simple Marketing Now, in the third segment in an ongoing series on social networking talks about advanced uses For Twitter, setting up TweetDeck and conducting multiple parallel searches as well as the prime benefits of Twitter and the prime differences between Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook.
This segment is in three parts, each approximately 10 minutes long.
These are my show notes for the segment.
Advanced Twitter Introduction
At this point, you’ve set up a Twitter account, you’ve experimented with it, done searches using search.Twitter.com and Bing.com/Twitter, and you’ve shortened some URLs using Bit.ly. If you’ve done it enough, you’ve started to get aggravated with the inefficiency of working with 3 browser tabs, going back and forth. That’s when you know you are ready to go to the next step and set up TweetDeck.
What is TweetDeck? How Do You Use It?
TweetDeck is a free, third party Adobe Air desktop application. The best part about TweetDeck [some others are Seesmic, HootSuite, Twhirl, …] is that it allows you to create multiple parallel searches that you can easily edit and monitor so you can make sense of the Twitter Stream of the people you follow. You can filter based on the keywords or terms that matter to you.
When you download it [just go to a search window and type in TweetDeck; you can also get a version for your iPhone. For your Blackberry, an equivalent tool is UberTwitter..], you’ll see 3 columns:
- All Friends
- Mentions
- Direct Messages
Go ahead and add more columns! You might add a column for #TalkFloor or flooring, perhaps a brand name or a company name.
You might create a group and have a column for tweets made by those in the group [e.g., all those involved in home interiors or green based on their profiles].
As you filter, you can start to pay attention to who says what, and then start interacting by: RT or addressing someone directly with @. Then share some links. By the way, TweetDeck automatically shortens links - a marvelous feature!
Making Meaning out of Twitter
Twitter is different from LinkedIn and Facebook where you connect based on who you know professionally and casually. Twitter allows you to connect based on AFFINITY and shared interests. Similar to an in-person networking event except that you have a better chance of quickly finding people with whom you share a lot in common. I find it extremely beneficial as a B2B tool whereas others have found it extremely useful as a customer service tool, or for special offers, for ordering, to communicate specific information [e.g., the Red Cross], for focus group type research, for conversational marketing or generating word of mouth. It all depends.
Whole Foods, for example: each store has its own Twitter account. There’s also a Whole Foods Twitter account for cheese and one for wine. [For more about Whole Foods and other Twitter success stories, read Twitter Success Stories From MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer.]
If you search under keywords or terms that are relevant to you, you’ll notice people whose tweets appeal to you. Consider following them.
Word of Caution: Don’t plan on building your following over night. Focus on quality rather than quantity. Build it slowly, consistently over time. Beware of schemes that promise you 10 million followers. You will regret it.
I build my network by connecting with folks I meet at conferences or in anticipation of a conference by following the # for that conference. During webinars, I follow and share observations via Twitter and meet liked minded professionals.
There are events called Meetups and Tweetups – ie.., meetings organized online. At Coverings, I participated in a Tweetup and met several fascinating people with whom I continue to exchange updates and relevant information. [If you are in the Northern New Jersey area, consider attending a Meetup of New Jersey Open Coffee - Montclair.]
Another fascinating event that takes place on Twitter is a Twitterchat - a regularly occurring conversation on a specific topic usually weekly and at a set time. There are a whole range of Twitter chats available. For example: #PRchat #carchat #booktweet or #BlogChat.
The organizer will put together a summary blogpost in anticipation of the event listing discussion topic and questions for the Twitterchat.
On the day of the event, you can participate by creating a search column with the # for the event in TweetDeck, or use another application such at WhatTheHashtag. At the start, the moderator will do introductions and start the conversation by asking questions sequentially and responding to participants. Event can last 1 hour+. When it’s over, the moderator will summarize key points in a recap and include a transcript.
How to Build Your Twitter Following:
Other ways to build your following:
Use the Social Flooring Index to explore other Twitter accounts in the flooring industry.
You can search on ExecTweets and explore those accounts.
Two resources – WeFollow and Twellow – allow you to find users by subject area. There’s also Twellowhood which is geography based.
Let’s say you are a big supporter of Girls Scouts. The Girls Scouts has several active Twitter presences. You can connect with them on Twitter and help them get the word out.
Be sure to integrate your Twitter activity with LinkedIn and Facebook
What’s the point of all of this Twitter stuff?
Digital visibility! Twitter is search engine visible. It’s a way for you to differentiate yourself, it’s a way for you to be visible, to reach out and provide value.
Common Twitter Mistakes To Avoid:
At the recent MarketingProfs B2B Forum, I offered 20 minute 1 on 1 Twitter consulting advice to corporate marketers. My sessions started out with a quick evaluation to find patterns that got in the way of effective Twitter engagement. Here are some of the patterns I was on the lookout for:
- Unequal follower/following numbers
- No engagement - as in all tweets coming from you without any kind of interaction with others. May include a lot of 'shouting', too. It's usually because someone is tweeting from the web and has no idea conversation is taking place! This may make sense for a news organization, but not really for individuals.
- Tweeting as a corporate entity rather than as a person with a human voice.
What's Your Twitter Assignment?
Here's your assignment: Go explore! Think about how Twitter can create value for your business by thinking how you can offer value to others using the tool.
by Charlene Li and "
" by Steve Garfield
“Thanks to expert contributors such as Christine, the CMI is able to equip marketers with practical DIY advice that they can implement into their overall marketing programs."
