Man, I really love fall. The hullabaloo and goodwill (and beautiful weather) starts every year with my birthday (the day after Fall equinox) and steamrolls right through the New Year.
Though Halloween’s as much fun for me as any other, my favorite time of year’s always Thanksgiving and the holiday season. A time of reflection, peace and reunion with family and friends. What’s not to love about that?, says this observer.
But anywho, I made a new friend over the weekend, and to borrow her sentiments it seems we fell out of the same tree.
Her name is Sarah Skerik, a fellow PR nut and the current VP of Social Media at PR Newswire. She blogs about PR, social and search, so naturally we’re snug as a clown fish and sea anemone.
Great word, by the way, anemone.
Nemo! ...with teeth
Moving on.
In summary, this was my first webinar outside HubSpot, so that was kind of cool. Some of the highlights we covered were:
- Engaging in critical, compelling ways with audience/s is not episodic, but continual. Business and communications has moved from a “sometime” world to a real-time world
- Value rules. People (consumers) are no longer dependent on the proxy of trust afforded by a media brand
- When compelling content is combined with intelligent distribution, earned credibility results
- This accelerates the evolution from owned to earned influence
- Push and pull are not mutually exclusive. Savvy professionals and business owners acknowledge and activate a hybrid, holistic approach across the sales funnel
In essence, we’re driving home the point I recently made about how social media is not the end-all, be-all of top performers in the business space. Social media is not for everyone.
Done right, social can be optimized with other elements of the marketing mix for dynamic options, goals and results (because some of us are really geeky about the spirit and power of human potential).
And again, it is only one piece of the overall pie for converting qualified leads/customers, generating revenue, building awareness, driving action and change…the list goes on.
Forget Justin’s FutureSex Lovesounds, Future Productivity’s the rage now.
As media continues to evolve, quite a bit of soul searching also becomes a crucial element of business strategy. What are you trying to accomplish?
As Joe Pulizzi’s said time and again, what does success look like to you?
Ghouls, trolls and ghosts aside, I hope you all enjoyed the Halloween weekend…and still have all your teeth after bobbing for those apples (hayrides, Halloweekends at Cedar Point and whatever else all you crazy kids do) …
RELATED LINKS
Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire – Beyond PR: Engage Opportunity Everywhere
Gini Dietrich – Six Reasons Social Media Doesn’t Work
Paul Roetzer – What Are You Trying to Build?
Mark Schaefer – Snobberati: Bringing Down the Twitter Snobs
Byron Isaac 