Here’s a great video of me and Aseem Badshah the CEO of Socedo, a social media lead generation tool, talking about 7 ways Blockchain can transform marketing! We hope you enjoy it …

Two of my very good friends, Romi Mahajan of the KKM Group and Aseem Badshah of Socedo shot a video discussing our most recent blog post on the Return of the Marketing Mix. Ultimately, marketing is a mix of channels, tactics, and bets, of which some are measurable and some are not. It’s time for marketers to reclaim their role as engagers, risk-takers, and experimenters!!

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of Storytelling Gone Wild: The Key to Creating Viral Content. This webinar featured James Hilliard (@hillyprods) President & Executive Webcast Producer for Hilly Productions, Bree Baich (@BreeBaich) Transmedia Mastermind “The Storyteller“for SAS Institute and Jamie Turner (@AskJamieTurner) CEO of SIXTY. This webinar was sponsored by Citrix GoToWebinar. We discussed how to make your storytelling more viral by connecting with emotion.

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

1. What is viral content? – Anything that is liked by thousands and shared by millions
2. Connect with Emotion – This is the key to being memorable and getting that story to go viral!
3. Know your Audience – everyone loves kittens and puppies but you would never leverage them if your audience was B2B Execs!

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below.

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of Social Listening: Harness Marketing Insights from Consumer Conversations. This webinar featured Kevin Hack (@kevinhack) head of Social Intelligence in Global Digital Marketing Advancement at The Hershey Company, Kendra Simpson (@Kfoley) Director of Communications at Kohler Company, Drew Neisser (@DrewNeisser) founder and CEO of Renegade and Will McInnes (@willmcinnes) Integrated Marketing Analyst at Union+Webster. This webinar was sponsored by Brandwatch. We discussed tips and tricks for finding and utilizing Social Listening in your organization!

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

1. Customer Centric? – How can you declare that you are customer centric if you don’t do Social Listening!
2. ROI of Social Listening – what’s the ROI of not listening to your customers – most likely it more than the cost of Social Listening
3. Social to predict what’s next – more and more social is being used to find opportunities in product development or innovation

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below.

Our next webinar is titled Storytelling Gone Wild: The Key to Creating Viral Content be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of Omni-Channel Marketing: Creating the Right Mix for Your Brand. This webinar featured Martin Jones (@martinjonesaz) Senior Marketing Manager & Social Media at Cox Communications, Jahvita Rastafari (@Jrastafari) Social Media Manager at Act-On and Matt Hannaford (@mhannaford) Integrated Marketing Analyst at Union+Webster. This webinar was sponsored by Act-On. We discussed ideas and tips for cracking the code on Omni-Channel marketing!

Here are three requirements for Omni-Channel from the webinar:

1. Seamless – Trusted, unified consumer experience across multiple channel, platforms and devices
2. Convenient – Consumer expectations are fundamentally changing. Convenience is no longer a benefit – it is an expectation
3. Relevant – Interactions are personalized and tailored to the consumers need, interests, behavior and preferences

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below.

Our next webinar is titled Social Listening: Harness Marketing Insights from Consumer Conversations be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of The ROI of Influencer Marketing. This webinar featured Eric T. Tung (@EricTTung) Brand Ambassador for companies like Ford, Microsoft, Verizon and MasterCard, Kathleen Hessert (@KathleenHessert) CEO of Sports Media Challenge and Eric Berkowitz (@tracx) SVP of Global Services at Tracx. This webinar was sponsored by Tracx. We discussed ideas and tips from finding influencers for your brand to calculating ROI on your program.

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

1. Not all influencers are created equal – Brands should look beyond social metrics into psychographics and contextual intelligence to determine the ideal candidates
2. Bigger doesn’t mean better – A large following or readership does not inherently make a person influential
3. The ROI of Influence – True influence drives action, not just awareness

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below.

Our next webinar is titled Omni-Channel Marketing: Creating the Right Mix for Your Brand be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of How Does Social Listening Change the Way You Do Business (and Create ROI)? This webinar featured Mikael Lemberg (@Lemberg) Director of Product Management at Falcon Social, Andrew Ashton (@AndrewLAshton) Digital Marketing Specialist, Pizza Hut and Greg Gerik (@ggerik) CEO at Gerik & Company. We discussed a ton of ideas on how to capture ROI or create impact using social media!

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

1. The longer it takes you to collect your social media data, the less it will be worth to you
2. Don’t just listen to social media for listening sake, listen to social media with purpose!
3. Can’t get to ROI? Then at least be thinking strategically and always be looking for how you can use social data to show impact

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below.

Our next webinar is titled The ROI of Influencer Marketing; be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.

>

Here is a great piece on the maturity of a company’s Thought Leadership program by ITSMA.

Last year I was asked by ITSMA to collaborate on this piece with them. They also tapped into companies like Deloitte, E&Y, IBM, Coginzant, SAP and more.

What came out is quite interesting for any company looking to take their thought leadership program to the next level. Here are a few points I pulled out to highlight for you that can help you make the case internally:

• 79% of would-be buyers say thought leadership is important to critical to determining which providers they want to learn more about
• 75% of would-be buyers say thought leadership helps them determine which buyers to put on their short list
• Traditional format for thought leadership has been the white paper but in this era of digital and social that isn’t enough
• To reap the benefits of a thought leadership program you must have SME’s that are recognized outside of your company
• Interaction with SME’s in social media improves the ability to communicate key thought leadership ideas

Click here for a full copy of the report on the 4 Stages of a Thought Leadership Maturity Model

Enjoy!

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of Way Beyond Listening: Integrating Listening Into Your Platform for ROI. This webinar was sponsored by Synthesio and featured Brian Melinat (@brianmelinat) Director of Marketing Analytics within Dell, Kristine Vick (@kristinevick) Principal in the Digital and Content team at SAS, and Ben Lapidus (@benlapidus) Senior Sales Engineer at Synthesio. We discussed nine ways companies have found to connect social media to revenue and ROI.

Here are nine ways to connect Social Media to Revenue and ultimately ROI

1. Map your social activities to all 4 stages of a customer journey: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation and Retention
2. Connect social media to all marketing campaigns to gauge response
3. Connect social media to SEO activities to increase SEO
4. Plot your social media sentiment against your NPS scores
5. Provide delightful customer support
6. Listen for Lead Gen opportunities
7. Use social for new product ideas
8. Use social media to vet pricing of new products
9. Use social media for M&A ideas in your product lines

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below. Our next webinar is titled To LinkIn or Not to LinkIn: Getting Ahead of Your Competitors with Innovative Strategies; be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.

Last week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of Connecting Your Enterprise: Collaboration at Scale. This webinar was sponsored by Tracx and featured Nolan Carleton (@ParsleyCarleton) Lead Consultant Program Execution at AT&T, DeShelia Spann (@DeSheliaSpann) Digital Marketing Strategist at Eaton and Danielle Gerson (@tracx) solutions engineer at Tracx. We discussed how to setup an environment that cultivates growth and scale in social media.

Here are three of the key takeaways:

1. Start Silo Busting – Most enterprises start out in a segmented environment where by multiple departments are roles are isolated from one another and using their own social media point solutions and environments. Getting those silos to come down using one software solution is the first step to greater collaboration and scale in social.
2. Engage your Employees – An obvious place to help scale your efforts once a unified social media platform is in place is leveraging your employee advocates to help get the word out.
3. Watch out for Disjointed Workflow – Nothing hurts your ability to scale like disjointed workflow such as groups publishing in a vacuum or keeping their own datasets separated from the rest of the organization.

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below. Our next webinar is titled Way Beyond Listening: Integrating Listening Into Your Platform for ROI; be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.