Sunday Question – Should We Reward Egregiously Bad Behavior?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 25, 2010
Two weeks ago I was having a brief yet interesting conversation with someone on Twitter. He asked if people enjoyed Mel Gibson movies less these days because of some of the bad behavior that’s been attributed to him. I said I can’t get myself to watch anything with him in it; the other guy believed people should separate the private person from the works that person has done.
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This post is based on that conversation. It’s a hard topic to think about because we all not only have different thoughts on it, but it depends on what we perceive as “egregious” at the time.
For instance, there were a lot of people who turned against Michael Jackson during his trial, though I wasn’t one of them. Many people had already decided his guilt because they didn’t like his personal behavior otherwise. I don’t think you judge the quality of someone’s work because you don’t like their personal behavior. After all, Robert Downey, Jr has been to jail and rehab, what, 20 times (okay, exaggerating a bit), but he’s on top of the world, puts out great stuff, and, well, he’s just the most likable guy. No harm to anyone but himself.
Then we have Mel Gibson. I’ve tried to go out of my way not to hear any of these tapes that supposedly have him calling his ex-girlfriend all sorts of names and saying a lot of intolerant and racist things, but unless you turn off your TV or radio it’s going to get through, and I did eventually hear one thing; man, it sounds like him. He sounds drunk as well, and based on his past behavior with the police, it seems to be a pattern. The difference here, at least to me, is that he’s projected himself to be this super-Christian, even building his own church, has 9 kids and projected himself as the ultimate family man. Talented or not, I feel like I was sucked in only to be let down.
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Of course he’s not the only one. I’m sure y’all remember Jeffrey Jones from many movies including Ferris Bueller, Amadeus & Beetlejuice, who’s now a convicted sex offender. Then there’s R Kelly, who luckily got off from his underage sex trial and immediately prompted this response from a radio DJ (and who can blame him; it was R Kelly’s house, and the guy in the video ‘in his house’ urinated on a little girl who may or may not have been 18; he also married Alliyah when she was 15, so there’s a pattern. But I digress…). And, whether or not you believe OJ did it, does that demean his being a super talented athlete, which also goes for Lawrence Taylor, Ty Cobb, and Pete Rose? Politicians get forgiven by the masses many times over (Robert Byrd and, being fair, I have to include Nelson Mandela here).
This isn’t a new subject, but the way. Richard Wagner wrote some incredible music, and I’m almost ashamed to say that I love a lot of it. That’s because he was an avowed bigot in his hatred of Jewish people, and never tried to hide it either. Even today, there are symphonies that won’t play any of his music because of it. And while we’re on it, are we ever going to forgive Chris Brown for beating up Rihanna? Does he deserve it, being a kid of sorts when he did it?
In this day of sex tapes and, because of 24/7 media slips of the tongue, how much should we tolerate and support and forgive? Does it matter whether it’s a violation of a person harming themselves or someone else? What say you? Are there people you’ve kind of forgiven or people you won’t forgive?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Why Businesses Should Be On Twitter
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 23, 2010
In deference to my online buddy Mike CJ, he wrote a post earlier in the week which he titled Why Businesses Shouldn’t Be On Twitter. His main point was that instead of businesses being on Twitter, they should have individuals representing the business on Twitter so that they can show some personality and communicate directly with people.
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Whereas I agree with the last point, I disagree with the initial statement. In my opinion, businesses definitely need to be on Twitter, and for multiple reasons. Let’s take a look at some of these.
1. Branding. Businesses having a Twitter account get to make sure their logo is out there front and center whenever something is being written for the company. One should never overlook the importance of branding.
2. Customer Service. Last week I had an issue with one of my affiliates not paying me so I kind of called that company out by name on Twitter. Within 5 minutes I was being contacted by the company, or whomever was representing the company account on that day, and we got my issue resolved. I’ve talked in the past about other companies responding to the same type of thing, and last week my friend Josh Shear brought it home again.
3. Protection of name. If a company doesn’t sign up for their name, you can bet that at some point someone else will sign up and start using it, and unless they abuse it there will be nothing the company can do about it.
4. Marketing. Yeah, we all say we hate seeing marketing on Twitter, but what we really mean is we hate seeing someone pounding marketing message after message. If Sony had a Twitter account and suddenly announced that they were having a special one day sale where their 50″ HD TV’s were going on sale for $200, who wouldn’t want to know about that? Okay, I’ll admit that’s one of my special pipe dreams. 
I agree with Mike that Twitter users should have personality. I’ve written about that often enough as well, how I’m looking for more “social” than “selling”. But I think any major business that doesn’t have a Twitter account is allowing their competition to get the leg up on them, and allowing those few people who might complain about them to get the message out without having the chance to offer any assistance and hopefully stem a bad situation.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
SMM Workshop D-Day – The Outline
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 22, 2010
By the time you see this post I should have been delivering information on social media marketing for about 2 hours. If you’re on Twitter early this afternoon, you might even see me throwing out a general hello to show the people there how it all works, and hopefully you’ll say hello to the group so they can be royally impressed by how friendly people who I’m connected with there can be.
 by A. G. Conrad |
Since you’re reading this, it means you’re not at the event. I thought, therefore, that I would just throw out some of the highlights I’m talking about based on my outline. No big details here; that’s because I’m still doing the next workshop in August. But this is the direction I’m going in today.
I’m starting out talking about general concepts of social media marketing; what it is, how it can help one’s business, etc. I’m going to talk about social media in general, the past and the present, not so much the future because there’s things that show up on a weekly basis that just amaze me. I will be talking about the concept of social media 3.0, however, which I have to admit is somewhat scary to me in many ways, being a distrusting baby boomer. I’m going to throw in some statistics that I hope will blow people’s minds, such as YouTube averaging 123 million views a day.
Then I’m going to talk about some components of social media marketing, of which I came up with 9, though if someone else was doing this I’m sure they’d come up with more. My components are: publicity; outreach; branding; cause marketing; marketing & sales; public relations; search engine optimization; reputation management and communicating with customers. I will give an example for each of these to help highlight my points. Then I’m going to talk about the positives and negatives of social media marketing; trust me, there are plenty of each.
Finally I’m going to get into more meat on specific things, starting with LinkedIn, which, as you know from a couple of days ago, I feel is the most important thing for business people to get into. I’ll follow that up with email marketing, Twitter, blogging, audio and visual media, which was yesterday’s topic, YouTube and finally Facebook. Then I’ll have some closing comments on it all.
If all goes well, this presentation will go between 5 and 5 1/2 hours, and everyone will have a good idea of how to begin setting up their own social media marketing system. Some people, if they remember to bring their laptops, will end the day with accounts set up in at least half of the things I’m going to talk about; after all, why set someone up on YouTube if they don’t have a video to upload, right? And I hope to make it fun while making it educational. I was going to throw my parrot pictures into the mix and tell jokes, but Renée asked me not to do it, so I won’t. Okay, that’s a lie; she didn’t ask me not do, and I figure if I need ice breakers along the way I’ll just toss them in there.
Now you know what you’re missing, and if you’re local, hopefully you’ll be able to make the August 22nd workshop. If not, well, maybe one of these days we’ll record some aspects of this, or we’ll put it down in a book and sell it somewhere. I can’t see me doing 5 hours online; I think I’d go nuts. Wish me luck; oh yeah, too late for that.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
SMM Countdown – Audio And Visual Options
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 21, 2010
Tomorrow I’ll be doing my workshop on social media marketing locally with my friend Renée Scherer of Presentations Plus. Once again, instead of talking about it, I’m going to link to yesterday’s post on LinkedIn, which will link to the previous day’s post, and I’m also going to link to my post from last week talking about the third phase of my social media marketing methods for this workshop, since something that’s there is something I’m going to talk about here.
 by Morgan Howarth |
Something that’s generally easier to do today is to create a social media marketing strategy using audio and visual media options to help get your message across. Just six years ago visual media didn’t really exist for the masses, and even when it went live in February 2005, I doubt anyone expected that YouTube could be used for the types of things it’s used for now. Back in 2004 we could create MP3 files as sound files that we could then somehow get to other people, but they were large files and we didn’t have the download speeds we do today, so it took awhile before people could listen to your media.
These days, getting a video online takes creating an account on YouTube or Vimeo or one of the other sites, uploading the video from your computer or flash drive, which will only take a few minutes depending on the speed of your connection, and not only are you set with your video being online but it creates both a link to the video and code for your video that can be embedded into yours or anyone else’s site that takes a liking to it. That’s what I did last week with the above link to Phase III, where I posted a video of Renée talking about both our event and the place it was being held. It literally took her a couple of hours to film the video (multiple takes), get it to someone who cleaned it up in a couple of hours, then get it to me and have me take about 20 minutes to create the account and get the video uploaded. Then the next day it took me a minute to embed the video into the post; just amazing stuff.
With audio, there are many options, free and paid. Free options include popping an MP3 file online, which I’ve done with the numerous times I’ve been interviewed on both this blog and my business blog. Because download speeds are faster now and MP3 files are more compressed, this isn’t as bad a deal as it was in the past. There are also ways to create podcasts, such as hooking up with a site like Blog Talk Radio or a podcasting service that lets you record a file and convert it to something where people can listen to it easily enough without worrying about the time or having to deal with large files. A great example of that is my friend Tim Dodge’s site where he uploads podcasts of books he’s written one chapter at a time, since he’s also reading them. You should check out one of his books, Acts of Desperation, which I actually got to read and critique before he recorded it. If you look at the page, you’ll see multiple ways you can listen to it. Start at the bottom then move up, then go to the first page to listen to the rest of it.
No matter which way you go, it’s good to know that there are these social media marketing options, whether you decide to create them yourself or have someone else do it for you. One of these days, I’m going to finally purchase a camera, and then watch me go!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
SMM Countdown – Why LinkedIn Is Essential If You Want Business Or Work
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 20, 2010
I’m two days away from my social media workshop, and I’m spending this week talking about social media aspects. Instead of linking to my sticky post about the workshop, I’ll link to yesterday’s post where I asked how social are you ready for.
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Today I’d like to talk a bit about LinkedIn. I realized in looking back that I’ve never talked about it all that much before, and I think it’s time to rectify that one. After all, I’m of the opinion that if you’re either someone who works for themselves, are looking for work, or already are working and hope to work for some time to come, that it’s essential for you to be on LinkedIn.
Why? Because LinkedIn is the place where true connections can be made with business people from around the world. It’s another opportunity to post something about your business, about your background, no matter what you do. It’s another opportunity for both advertising and networking. It’s another opportunity to talk to business people about topics local and international, talk to people within your industry or people who shares the same interests as you just like direct networking.
It didn’t use to be like that. In the beginning, it was just a place to try to get business links, but it wasn’t overly friendly an application. So I connected to a few people; then what? Then they added things like groups and applications and suddenly it was a more vibrant place.
For instance, something I do at least once a week, if not more often, is to go on LinkedIn and, in the area where I have 120 characters, mention something I’m doing or did earlier in the day. Those messages get out to people who either check in on you from time to time, or through the weekly email that goes out to every person on LinkedIn, but most specifically the people who you’re connected with have the opportunity to see what it is you’re doing. I also belong to a few groups, one for my local chamber of commerce, a couple for consultants in general, and the others having something to do with some of the business ventures I presently do. I have the opportunity to comment on what others have written, as well as create my own topics of discussion.
The best thing, though, are the connections. You can find local people you know and if you know their email address you can connect directly to them if they approve. If you don’t know their email addresses, or those of other people you might seek out for whatever reason, you see people in your network who might be connected to those people, and you can ask for an introduction, of sorts. For instance, according to the site, I have 237 direct connections, which means I have almost 22,000 people I can connect to in within reach via one person, and just under 7.5 million people I could potentially connect with if I branched out to try to meet more people. That’s phenomenal!
The other side of that, however, is that you need balance. That seems to be a theme of mine lately, so let me explain. One, you really only want to connect with people who you either know or who are in industries you’re in; at least initially. That’s because those are the people who will do you the most good. Trying to connect to everyone “just because” not only wastes your time, but if people you try to connect to visit your site and don’t see you connected to enough people who could potentially benefit them later on, they’re going to ignore your request. Like networking in person, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.
And two, even though you can do some minor advertising, you have to watch that you don’t go to far. Not only will people on this site object to being sold to, and trust me they will call you out (I haven’t been called out because I know the game, but others have been lambasted and reported for doing it), but you can get kicked out by LinkedIn for doing it. Since this is business and not pleasure, and it’s the best one around, you don’t want that occurring either.
Of course there are other sites which say they’re all about business, and they probably are, but if you remember yesterday’s post (did you follow the link?), to be effective you shouldn’t overdo it because there’s just not enough time to do it all. Of course, if you’re on LinkedIn, you can hook up with me there; just let me know how I know you if we don’t know each other all that well.
No matter what, if you work in some capacity, you need to be on LinkedIn.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
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