Maria Ogneva

LEADING THOUGHTS It’s almost impossible to be effective in social media without adding a personal touch. The only reason I say “almost impossible” is because I don’t believe in absolutes and want to leave the door just slightly ajar for someone to come and prove me wrong. That being said, I haven’t observed many people who can do social media successfully and remain completely anonymous. Below are some reasons why this is the case.

LEADING THOUGHTS

It used to be that branding was more or less straightforward. Mind you, it was never easy — one of my favorite marketing professors from undergrad used to say “A good Brand is like your friend; you can describe what your friend is like to another friend”. The more concisely you can convey your purpose, vision, meaning, and differentiation, the better job you have done at branding yourself. But with social media, just because you as the company say something about your product, does not make people run out and purchase it.

I spent the past couple of days in Las Vegas for CES, and even though consumer electronics is not my focus, it has an increasingly new media bend to it.  As such, it was great to see my old industry friends and meet new ones. I found myself having a series of conversations about where social media is heading. It’s been on my mind quite a bit lately, and my latest thoughts and conversations are what inspired this post.

As social media moves out of the experimental stage and into that of business plans and financial commitments, and as the industry matures, we need a better plan than just throwing some tweets into the “social river”. I think the idea of a social business...

LEADING THOUGHTS Welcome back! Last week, we wrote about the importance of goal setting for your engagement strategy, as it relates to social media in this particular example. What you do on the social web, just like any other business activity, can’t be haphazard. Social media is fun and exciting, and I fully understand the temptation of doing it for the sake of doing it. However, it’s a business activity, and you should approach it as such, with a plan for execution and measurement, metrics appropriate for your goals, and maybe even its...