There’s a new dance craze going around the @NMSosphere this week, and in true NMS style…we don’t even have to leave our computers to get into the groove. That’s because this dance is virtual and comes in the form of Dance Mom-Me, the recently launched application on MyLifetime.com that’s inspired by the network’s hit reality show, Dance Moms.
Although the National Football League continues to boast the unofficial title as America’s Pastime (sorry, MLB) and the league’s television ratings are off the charts, NFL execs still haven’t figured out how to get fans excited about the Pro Bowl. The league is on the right track as they strive to make their all-star game more accessible to fans.
I’m a man of many lists. Whether they are to prioritize my work day, go grocery shopping or plan for a trip, I like to make sure whatever is important is not forgotten. A list, however, doesn’t need to be limited to the practical. If you watch as much TV as I do, you know you see your favorite characters wining and dining in New York or living it up in Las Vegas and think to yourself “I’m definitely going there next time I’m in the city!” Inevitably though, once you make it to “the city” you end up wandering the streets without a clue of what that place was called, just that they had a really cool fountain at the entrance.
It’s always an exciting time of year here at New Media Strategies with the holidays, year-end wrap up and a ton of NMS Yuletide traditions. This time of year always seems to be the best time for celebration and for reflection to take some measure of what you’ve accomplished and where you are heading next. In that spirit, over the past few weeks with the help of my wife Burson, I’ve been doing some serious reflecting and in the days ahead I hope to do some serious celebrating.
That is why I want to share with you that for me, twelve years after creating New Media Strategies, the world's first social media marketing agency, and five years after selling the company to Meredith Corporation, I've decided it's time to start the next chapter.
Since the F8 Developers Conference in September, where Mark Zuckerberg announced major design updates to the Facebook platform, the way I participate on the popular social network has changed. While the main headlines coming out of F8 focused on a significant overhaul for the profile format called Timeline, the most significant improvement involved the Facebook News Feed. These changes to the News Feed have slowly caused me to leave my Facebook friends behind. And I don’t really miss them.
The future of social media marketing is in digital storytelling; the ability to humanize a brand in ways with which people identify and are closely engaged, thus feeling invested in its future. The brand becomes an extension of the fan and they are its most compelling ambassador. Social media is more than water cooler chat and exceeds the benefits of traditional word of mouth marketing. While it provides immensely useful data about our habits in real-time, the new frontier of social media is chronicling lifestyle. When viewed not at the scale of minute by minute updates, social media provides a holistic picture of who we are and how we live. It begins to speak to customers as whole people.
I was recently asked by Sean Corcoran of Forrester to answer one simple but fascinating question: When do companies come to New Media Strategies for social media help rather than their digital agency, PR firm, or traditional agency and why? Companies tend to go with their incumbent digital agency, PR firm, or traditional agency when they are still in the early stages of social media experimentation. It is a path of least resistance in situations where they cannot make the case for a dedicated and significant social media budget, or where they have yet to establish a holistic social media strategy for their organization based on their inability to understand the impact that a sustained commitment to social media will have on their business.
Mustaches have long been associated with the pillars of awesomeness. Art (Dali), Science (Einstein), Academia (Nietzsche), Private Investigation (Magnum), to name a few. In the past few years, mustache’s have been garnering attention for awesomeness for something new, charitable causes. Movember, combining the slang term for mustache “Mo” and the month of November, is an annual, month-long initiative that raises funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that effect men. The movement began in Australia in 2003 and now has more than one million participants in over 15 countries. In the U.S. specifically, proceeds benefit the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong.