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Digital Capitalism

A blog about social media, marketing, the internet and everything else.


Motrin's Headache: Marketers and SEO Extend Pain Reliever's Crisis.November 17

Over the weekend a crisis began to unfold for Motrin. It was result of a new online ad that began running Saturday. I have embeded the ad below in case you haven't seen it, but it caused a lot of anger from the "mommy blogging" community. From this anger came an endless stint of tweets and blog postings.



The Economy Sucks! How To Prepare Yourself For The ReboundNovember 14

So we have known for a while now  that the U.S. economy is not in good condition, but in recent weeks we are seeing continued evidence that job losses are going to increase and the economy maybe be in a bad place for awhile. Recently several folks have written posts discussing this issue and how people should be demonstrating their value to their current employer. I believe that this is critically important.

However, I don't think that is enough and think people need to focus on two other things as well: building their personal network to prepare for job loss and increase their personal skill set to get ahead as the economy rebounds.

Building Your Personal Network:
I am not going to sit here and tell you that you should have 1,000 linked connections and 3,000 twitter followers and you will be fine if you have to look for a new job, because that is bull shit.  I realize that people participate in a variety of online and offline networks that work best for them, so to give you a  list of specific must dos would be ignorant.  You should however, strengthen your relationships with people within your networks. So how do you do this?

  1. Meet People in Real Life! - Yes it sounds simple but many people don't think to do it. I would suggest picking a day or two each week and working to set a coffee, lunch, or drink meeting with someone from one of your networks to catch up with them and better connect with the happenings in their life. It is amazing

Uncase Study: How Flemings Steakhouse Could Use Social Media To Be The Expert In SteakNovember 10

Note About "Uncase Studies": Traditionally case studies are used to describe how a company or organization solved a problem. Others with similar problems can then use the case study to understand how they may solve their own problems. I will be writing an ongoing series of "uncase studies" that will outline what companies or organizations could be doing to improve their marketing and community building efforts using social media approaches.

Disclaimer: The companies and organizations that I talk about in my "uncase studies" are not my clients. I attempt to research any of their current work to leverage social media. Just because I write about them does not mean that the people that handle their marketing (internal or external) are not planning to implement social media strategy and tactics that could be far better than the ones discussed in my posts. It means they had not been publicly implemented that I could find at the time my post was published. 

The Catalyst:
Steak Why is Flemings the first uncase study? Flemings recently opened their first restaurant in the Raleigh-Durham area and as part of their opening marketing push they sent me and others in the Raleigh area a $100 gift certificate to try their restaurant, wit

Corporate Twittering: 6 Ways Companies Should Be Using TwitterNovember 10

Twitter, the popular microblogging tool that I have posted about many times before, because it is one of my favorites, is becoming more and more mainstream.  As Twitter crosses into the mainstream, more companies are signing up with the hope of marketing and building customer communities.

Most companies are not maximizing their full Twitter potential. Here are my 6 ideas for companies to help them making sure they are getting the most out of their time investment in Twitter. (though the ideas here could be applied to social media in general this list is targeted at Twitter)

  1. Learn About The People Following You - Every time a person follows you on twitter you can get an e-mail to let you know. This is where most companies on Twitter make their first mistake. Take this as an opportunity to reach out to that person and find out more about why they are following you. Eric from Auction Direct does a great job of this. He has developed a site to highlight people that take his new follower survey. With his site TweetandGreet.com he get lots of information from folks that relates back to his core business of selling cars.

Podcasting Sponsorships Don't Scale: 5 ideas For Monetizing PodcastsNovember 6

Mic Podcasting use is also rising and now reaches 18% of the US population, up from 13% a year ago according to this report.

It is still a young platform for distributing content, but one I believe will be successful in the future as more people become comfortable getting their audio and video online thanks to Hulu, Pandora, and YouTube.  The other problem that is stopping the growth of podcasting is a lack of a solid business model.

The most popular business model for podcasts right now is sponsorships, this is the model we currently use on my podcast with Wayne Sutton, Talk Social News.  It works for us right now, and it is working for other more popular podcasts like DiggNation. The problem with the sponsorship model is that it doesn't scale well and can be a hard sell for podcasters that are just getting started.

Here are my 5 ideas for alternative podcasting business models:

  1. Develop A Po