Influential Marketing Blog

Can Jumo Solve The NonProfit World's Biggest Marketing Problem?

Today marks the launch of Jumo, the new long awaited social networking platform from Facebook co-Founder Chris Hughes. In a recent interview with the Huffington Post published today, Hughes described the mission of the site this way:

Most every site that's out there focuses on donations. And, don't get me wrong, donating to organizations, especially right now, is really important. But Jumo is taking a very different approach. It's not just about how much money are donating to this or that group. It's about what kind of relationship you are building with that organization.

As anyone who has ever worked on a nonprofit communications or marketing plan will tell you, the single biggest challenge when it comes to cause related marketing is motivating people to act on what they feel. You might hear about underpriveleged youth or dwindling trees in the rainforest and most of us will have an instinctual emotional reaction that these things are terrible and we should do something to help. The problem is that this emotion is tough to turn into real action - whether that action involves donating money or offering time.

Some have argued that this difficulty is leading nonprofits into a wrongheaded attempt to make supporting a cause nothing more than a click (mockingly called "slacktivism") - which devalues the importance of real contribution via time or money, and offers people a chance at "moral self licensing" where they feel they have done their good deed and therefore stop trying to do more.

Jumo's big insight, as Hughes shares in his launch blog post, is that there can be multiple levels of engagement and if a social network can make it easy to do everything from support a cause you care about simply by clicking a "like" button - to actually donating money or agreeing to volunteer, then that is a big win for the entire nonprofit community. On Jumo, I can support causes as much or as little as I like, and find all of them in one place. The mission of the site is clear, and it's promise is huge.

The most powerful part of this idea, however, may be its directory aspect that first launched early Internet superstar sites like Craigslist and Yahoo. In a world where we have far too much noise and demands on our attention - something like Jumo could offer a one-stop shop for anything related to doing good by supporting a cause related organization. At least in part it is based on the assumption that there is a large population of Internet-savvy people who would do more if it were just easier. Whether you think Jumo can succeed at its mission or not, it's hard to argue with that.

Small Business Saturday: Amex's Smartest Marketing Effort Yet

This morning as most Americans will wake up after the busiest "Black Friday" shopping day of the year, a weekend of buying and saving is likely to continue as people start to catch up on buying things they need and things they don't. This year, however, Black Friday will be followed by the newly named "Small Business Saturday." Heavily promoted by American Express* along with thousands of partnering small businesses, this is an integrated effort to get more Americans to choose to shop at smaller establishment on one day. Aside from being exactly the kind of promotion anyone should love to see from a big company like American Express, there are a few other points that make this a marketing effort that could easily be one of the most inspired from a company who has some of the best marketing and communications of any brand in any industry. Here are a few things I love about this concept (and lessons you can take away from it):

1. Put your money where your marketing is. Instead of just promoting this day as a feel good moment in time, Amex is also offering a $25 statement credit to anyone who registers for the promotion and then shops at a participating small business. In addition to the emotional incentive of helping a small business in your area, this credit demonstrates that Amex is willing to put some real money behind helping small businesses and giving back to those which use and accept American Express.
2. Integrate your promotion. Though I heard about Small Business Saturday quite some time ago, I also saw TV ads for it, full page print ads, Facebook advertising and heard about it on the radio. Of course, this is advice that any marketer would love to follow if they had the same budget as Amex has to spend on all these channels - but taking this type of integrated approach really helps to cement the idea in the minds of Americans and make sure as many people as possible know about Small Business Saturday.
3. Create a social hub. All the materials and information for Small Business Saturday exist on a Facebook page that gained well over a million fans in less than three weeks. From this page, you can not only learn about and register for the effort - but also download signs and banners for your business to use online or in real life to show that you are participating, and also get access to extended tools and information to help your small business (such as the Open Forum website which I am also a contributor to). In another effort to put their money behind this promotion, Amex also offered free Facebook advertising credits for small businesses as well.
4. Stand for something bigger. Perhaps the most important lesson from not only Small Business Saturday, but also all of Amex's efforts to connect with and support small businesses is that it allows a brand that could be just another credit card company using Vikings in TV ads to try and sell their latest credit card to stand for something bigger. Amex is the champion of small businesses, and small businesses are the "backbone of the US economy" (as the often repeated cliche in business goes).
5. Demonstrate real results. While Small Business Saturday is just happening today, the last piece that will complete this promotion will be Amex reporting back to the country and media on the impact that the entire effort made on the US economy. How many dollars people spent with small businesses, how many times their statement credit offer was redeemed, and how many small businesses participated. With this last piece of the puzzle, this campaign could turn out to not only be among the finest that Amex has ever done - but also be converted into a marketing case study that business school students will study in the future.

* American Express is a client of Ogilvy, my employer, and I have worked on marketing campaigns for Amex in the past as well as contribute to their Open Forum website. I did not work on the Small Business Saturday program, however, and this post was not solicited or paid for in any way.

How To Use Guest Blogging For Fun And Profit

This post is republished from my original article on the Amex Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog, where I share ideas and marketing techniques specifically to help small businesses stand out. To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

When thinking about perhaps using something like a blog to promote your own business, though, it can seem like a very time-intensive proposition. You won't always have time to blog and sometimes it can be nearly impossible to keep a blog up to date enough to continually drive an audience. Luckily, there is another technique that you might consider where you can realize the value of blogging for your business without ever creating a blog yourself - and that is through guest blogging.

 

Guest blogging is exactly what it sounds like - the chance to share your point of view through a blog post or article that you contribute to an already established blog. The benefits of this are multiple:

 

1. Saves time by helping you avoid making the longer term commitment to start your own blog.
2. Gives you much greater potential visibility for something you write by posting on a site that already has a readership.
3. Provides you with an excuse to connect and build a relationship with a high influence blogger.

 

If you want to get a start with guest blogging, the process is fairly simple and is similar to one that a freelance journalist might use when trying to get a new writing assignment. You will need to start by identifying the blog or blogs that you want to contribute to. A good place to start is with industry, media or educational institution blogs that have frequent postings (a least a couple of times a week). This could mean a business oriented site such as BNet or a group blog from a recognized business school. Any of those are ideal starting points because in addition to getting a blog posted there, they can provide you with a credential which you can then use when you approach other blogs.

 

Once you identify who you will target, you need to create a good pitch for your contributed post. This includes a title that will cause someone to want to read further and a brief paragraph describing the idea. Typically you can send the pitch via email with a subject line similar to "Guest Blogging Story Idea: YOUR TITLE HERE." Send your idea to just your top choice media property first, and see if you can get it placed there. If that doesn't work, you can branch out to other places with the same idea. If you can't get it accepted, try coming up with a different idea and suggesting that instead.

If you get accepted and have the chance to write the post, here are a few short guidelines to make sure you can take advantage of the opportunity:

 

1. Deliver on time. Once you have an agreed timetable, you need to stick to it. Nothing can sour a relationship more quickly than getting the greenlight and having the blog you want to write for holding a spot for you that don't fill.
2. Use keywords heavily. Part of the longer term benefit of your guest post is that you want people to be able to navigate to it through search engines to learn about your business - and having the right keywords as part of your post helps make that happen.
3. Link to content and sites from others. As much as you can, try to promote the work of others in your post so you can also use your guest post as a way to connect with others by mentioning them and showing up in their Google Alerts that most businesses and online influencers are now setting up to track mentions of themselves or their brands.
4. Share and help promote your post. Part of what you should commit to when you try to find a guest blogging opportunity is helping to get your post out to as wide an audience as possible by posting a link on your website, emailing your contact list of customers and anything else you can think of to drive more readers to the post.

30 Second Book Review: microMARKETING

Who has time to read books? We all should, but it's tough to know what is worth reading. Each week, this blog will spotlight a new book relevant for marketers or people in business with ideas worth learning and sharing. Through a combination of a personal interview with the Authors, and short review - you'll get the basic premise of the book and why you might want to read it. To recommend a book to be featured, send an email pitch to influentialmarketing@gmail.com.

This week's featured book is microMARKETING - Get Big Results By Thinking And Acting Small, the first book from social media consultant Greg Verdino.

THE INTERVIEW (Thoughts from Greg Verdino):

1. What inspired you to write microMARKETING?

There are so many social media books on the market but many are thin on insights, short of practical approaches and virtually devoid of hard discussions about tangible results - conversation isn't enough; neither is "engagement"; marketing - social included - needs to move the needle... Others - books like the For Dummies series or the rash of "Twitter" books - put tactics and tools before strategy, providing (quite frankly) no actionable insights about what the bigger trends that have spawned micro-platforms like Twitter and micro-formats like web video, blog posts, etc will mean for marketers even after the platforms we use right now give way to another set of shiny objects. 

I wanted to write a book that explored the social media landscape - and more specifically the micromedia and microcontent landscapes - from a more strategic perspective than the latter, while applying a practitioner's eye (I've been marketing for 20+ years and immersed in social both personally and professionally for 5+ years) to deliver real insights, approaches that I know work and tackle the "but what were the results" question head-on.

2. What is the big idea of the book?

Over the past decade or so, a series of shifts have resulted in the hyperfragmentation of our mass culture and media into millions of niche microcultures, consumer-created micromedia and bit-sized microcontent formats. Many marketers acknowledge that this has happened but, because mass is all they've known throughout their careers, continue to do the same things they've always done to reach big audiences - even though those things are less effective than ever before. I believe - and the book bears this out with a dozen or so results-backed case studies - that companies can be more effective and achieve better ROI if they instead tapped directly into the trends toward microculture, micromedia and microcontent by adopting a series of micromarketing approaches - essentially doing lots and lots of small but meaningful things to forge deep connections and deliver real value to their best "few" customers and prospects.

3. Who is the perfect person to read this book?

I wrote the book primarily for client- and agency-side marketers that are looking to understand social media from a strategic perspective (rather than from the standpoint of tools, tactics and technologies) and learn new, repeatable approaches that they can apply to their own businesses right away. If a reader is a social media novice, the book offers (as Godin wrote) my take on "the greatest hits of social media marketing" so it's a great primer. If you're a social media veteran, you'll find new innovative approaches and actionable insights that will help you take your programs to the next level and get bigger results and have more predictable success.

THE 30 SECOND REVIEW (Why You Should Read It):

If you were to buy a business book based on your ambitions, you might never get to one with the word "micro" in it because it came across as a small idea. The big idea of Greg Verdino's book, however, comes by virtue of the simple insight that big things happen when you know how to put the right small things together. Unlike many business books written by professional speakers, Greg's background comes as a VP at a large agency running strategic social media campaigns on behalf of clients ... in other words, he has street cred. And while many of the social media examples in microMARKETING might be familiar to the uber-geeky social media mavens in the audience - for most readers the examples he shares will help to cement the concept behind the book.  Ultimately, you will learn how to use the elusive technique of creating "microcontent" to engage your audiences and stand out. (Review written by Rohit Bhargava)

LINKS AND MORE INFORMATION:

Official Book Website: http://www.micromarketingbook.com/
Author's Website: http://gregverdino.typepad.com/

REVIEW PHILOSOPHY (Why This Review Matters):

All the books that are reviewed in this series are worth your time. That's why you won't find any negative book reviews on this blog. As an Author myself, I have hundreds of book on my shelf and have researched hundreds more. I get many invitations to preview books and choose just one every week to share here on this blog. Read my other book reviews at http://www.rohitbhargava.com/book-reviews/.

The Simple Secret To Being Strategic With Your Marketing

This post is republished from my original article on the Amex Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog, where I share ideas and marketing techniques specifically to help small businesses stand out. To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

In any business, there are things that your customer cares about and things that they don't. You may think that you know this off the top of your head, and that is probably true, but being strategic involves one very simple first step ... writing those things down. This will seem like the most basic advice ever, but take a piece of paper and make a list of the things that are most important to your customer at this particular moment. The simple reason this is essential to do before you create any sort of marketing or advertising is because you can test it against those things to see if it actually addresses them. That's the definition of being strategic - doing something that will result in your desired impact.

To bring this to life, let's take a look at some marketing that is un-strategic. A great industry to focus on for this is the domestic US airline industry. For some reason, it has been an industry where marketing campaigns are launched based on little more than a creative concept and little strategic justification (with a few notable exceptions such as Southwest Airlines or Virgin Airlines). So taking the advice from earlier in this post, if you were to outline the things that a typical airline flier cares about you might end up with some version of this broad list of four things:

1. Time & Efficiency - Will you get me where I'm going on time and with as little waiting around as possible?
2. Comfort & Experience - Will the experience be as comfortable as possible with minimal suffering?
3. Price & Fees - Is the price reasonable and can I avoid getting charged lots of extra fees?
4. Frequent Flier Miles - Will I collect frequent flier miles or accrue some other long term personal benefit?

The order of these items may shift depending on if someone is travelling for business or personal reasons, but in general this list could represent the vast majority of the population of travelers. Now imagine some of the marketing for airlines that you might have seen - such as the cartoon character animations set to the Gershwin instrumental music which has become the signature theme for United Airlines. It is very tough to relate a campaign like that to any one of the core things that an airline customer might care most about. More importantly, there is little relevance to the things that are happening in the airline industry today, such as concerns about security, backlash against moves to charge for check in and carry on bags, and general unhappiness at the shrinking levels of customer service.

Contrast that with recent marketing from Southwest Airlines which is all about how they "love your bags" and don't charge extra fees for you to check your bag on one of their flights. The strategy behind a campaign like that is clear - they know their customers care about cost and not paying extra, and appeal to that by ensuring customers that when you buy a ticket on Southwest, you won't be nickel and dimed for every other little thing.

Applying this to your own small business, the most strategic marketing you do will be all about something that your customer cares about right now. It is not just about doing something evergreen, such as promoting how your business may offer a lower cost or higher quality than others. Most customers care about those things all the time. But taking advantage of the moment that is happening right now means something more.

Scott Jordan, the CEO of ScotteVest (a small business that sells "gear-enabled clothing") is a great example of this. When the iPad first came out, Scottevest was among the first to have "iPad-enabled clothing" with pockets that could fit the iPad. Then when airlines announced that they would be charging for carry-on bags (except Southwest, of course), Scott promoted one of his vests that was basically a "wearable carry-on" – strategically exploiting the fact that jackets are not considered carry-on bags by most airlines.

When you have the right strategy behind your marketing, standing apart becomes much easier and it puts less pressure on you to have an amazing creative concept. Creativity is great, but strategy is what separates great marketing that actually sells something from marketing that might end up being fun but delivering nothing.

How Coke Is Reimagining The Future Of Social Events

It is easy to complain about the trivial nature of the majority of social media content, but it is rapidly becoming a fact of life that the socially connected among us can't help sharing our lives as they happen with our virtual networks. One place where this sharing behaviour becomes particularly accelerated is at live events. People tweet more often, take more photos and generally become more social both online and off.

At Coca-Cola Village in Israel recently, Coke tried an interesting experiment in social sharing by offering over 600 teenagers a wearable wristband that contained their Facebook profile details. Then throughout the weekend, these teens could automatically tag themselves in pictures, check in to various locations and generally post and share to Facebook without needing to use a mobile device or computer ... which was a good thing since the Village looks a lot like Spring Break. Here's an interesting promotional video:



While the photo tagging gets a lot of attention in the video, the biggest idea for me was the "wave your hand to like something" feature that these RFID tags allowed the teens to do. Imagine if this could be recreated on a larger scale at all kinds of events or even retail locations. Just wave your hand/wristband to like a page on Facebook, or join an email list for promotional offers. No lists to add your email address to and no URLs to remember. When following, friending or finding a brand becomes as easy as a flick of your wrist, that would really be something for marketers to get excited about. I can already see the signs: wave here to join our community.

The One Thing Every Social Media Site Is Failing At (Except LinkedIn)

I have account with most social media sites that you have probably heard of, and a few that you probably haven't. It's not from being super socially connected, but rather from my desire to experiment and try new tools to see what value they might offer for me and for the businesses I work with. Over the last year, though, I have uncovered one important thing that most social media sites do tremendously badly and that I hope someone will fix.

As much as I enjoy my virtual friendships, there is still a huge value for me in connecting in person with people to meet face to face. Despite how easily social media and social networks help us to connect with people we know or might know online, the most popular sites (Facebook and Twitter, in particular) fall short when it comes to helping people meet up in real life. Here are a few of the challenges;

1. Very difficult to search and filter your networks by location, and then to send them a message.
2. Lack of data on where people actually are, versus what network they usually belong to or where they live.
3. No integration between networks on multiple sites to allow me to see all my connections in a particular location.

To date, there are three models I have seen from sites who are trying to solve one small part of this challenge:

1. Meetup/Evite/Twtvite - organize an event, invite people directly and hope they show up (and that you have their emails).
2. Foursquare/Gowalla - broadcast where you are RIGHT NOW and hope that others in your network are there too.
3. Plancast/Dopplr - broadcast where you WILL BE in the future and hope that others in your network will be there too.

Each tackles the problem slightly differently, but none has a complete solution that really works. The one site that is an exception to this happens to be LinkedIn. What that site knows is that not only do I want to be connected with people, but I might find great value in being able to send a message to all my friends in Boston (for example) letting them know I will be in town and that I would love to connect.

Why is this simple task so hard and who else will step up to solve it? That is one of the central questions that more and more people will be asking ... mainly because meeting face to face still matters, and I believe it always will.

30 Second Book Review: Making Ideas Happen

Who has time to read books? We all should, but it's tough to know what is worth reading. Each week, this blog will spotlight a new book relevant for marketers or people in business with ideas worth learning and sharing. Through a combination of a personal interview with the Authors, and short review - you'll get the basic premise of the book and why you might want to read it. To recommend a book to be featured, send an email pitch to influentialmarketing@gmail.com.

This week's featured book is Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, a book extension to the tremendously useful suites of websites. online tools and printed books from Scott Belsky, the Founder of Behance.

THE INTERVIEW (Thoughts from Scott Belsky):

1. What inspired you to write Making Ideas Happen?

I was most inspired by a sense of frustration. There is SO MUCH discussion in the creative world about inspiration and creativity, but very little discussion about organization and execution.

2. What is the big idea of the book?

For over five years I have been studying (borderline obsessed) with execution and organization in the creative world - and among entrepreneurs.

As we all know, most ideas never happen. But some people/teams are able to consistently defy the odds...and execute their ideas time and time again.

Finally, after years of thinking on the topic, I have written a book that summarizes the methods, insights, and best practices used by leading creative people and teams across industries  – companies like Google, IDEO, and Disney, and individuals like author Chris Anderson and Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh.

I hope that the book helps start SERIOUS discussion around execution and how creative people and teams should operate to make ideas happen.

3. Who is the perfect person to read this book?

People with ideas and solutions to problems, with a genuine desire to take action and make their ideas happen. Sadly, most ideas never happen. This book chronicles the best practices of those who defy the odds.

THE 30 SECOND REVIEW (Why You Should Read It):

Ideas and innovation are popular fodder for all kinds of books, with plenty of spiral-bound advice on how to have more ideas, which ones to focus on and generally how powerful new "blue sky" thinking can be. The only problem with a list of ideas is that too often none of them amount to anything. Anyone who has come out on the other side of a "great" brainstorm that has led to few results knows this already. The mission of this book should be obvious from its title ... and Scott manages to deliver on that promise by sharing a philosophy that he has created out of frustration--The Action Method.

Simple yet powerful ideas abound in this book - like maintaining a "backburner" for great ideas which may not be relevant right now, reducing projects to their most simplistic state and how to master the underrated skill of prioritization. In an inspired moment later in the book, Scott advises the reader to "develop a tolerance for ambiguity." Scott himself, however, demonstrates no such tolerance in this book and as a result you'll find his strong point of view both enlightening and empowering. Used as a companion with the amazingly useful (and free) Behance.net website - this book will help you give your ideas the full and fruitful life they deserve.   (Review written by Rohit Bhargava)

LINKS AND MORE INFORMATION:

Official Book Website:  http://the99percent.com/book
Author's Website: http://www.scottbelsky.com

REVIEW PHILOSOPHY (Why This Review Matters):

All the books that are reviewed in this series are worth your time. That's why you won't find any negative book reviews on this blog. As an Author myself, I have hundreds of book on my shelf and have researched hundreds more. I get many invitations to preview books and choose just one every week to share here on this blog. Read my other book reviews at http://www.rohitbhargava.com/book-reviews/.

Why I Get Invited To Speak At Events (And How You Can Too)

This post is republished from my original article on the Amex Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog, where I share ideas and marketing techniques specifically to help small businesses stand out. To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

Over the past several years, I've spoken at more than 250 events, done more than 50 keynotes and spoken to audiences as large as 2000 people and as small as a dozen. I have led panels, conducted full day workshops, done 45 minute conference opening keynotes and even done a unique style of presentation called Pecha Kucha where you present 20 slides that auto-advance without your control at a rate of 20 seconds per slide. I am officially part of the "speaking circuit" if there is such a thing and I have the requisite things in my resume such as having a book published, writing a blog and working with big and small businesses as clients.

I share this information not to impress you, but to tell you that when it comes to getting invited to speak at a conference, none of these things matter as much as you may think. Yes, having a background in speaking and a book published are good measures of your credibility. If you can do one or both, I highly recommend it. But neither is a necessity. When it comes to getting speaking gigs, there are a few important but simple principles that will greatly improve your chances:

 

1. Build your personal brand. Conference organizers want to know that you have built up a reputation for yourself before they invite you onto a speaking roster. Having a strong personal brand gives them that level of comfort that you will be a good choice to contribute to their event.
2. Work your network. I guarantee there are a few people in your social network (in real life or online) who are actively either helping with or putting on their own events. Start to pay attention to the people in your network as they share who they work for or what they are working on. Often, getting on the speaking list is largely based on who you know and who knows you.
3. Always be pitching. The sooner you come to the realization that you are not Bill Clinton or Guy Kawasaki, the better. Finding speaking opportunities means pitching yourself for them constantly, and understanding that conferences have longer lead times , and getting on the speaking roster early while a conference organizer is facing a blank spreadsheet and feeling the pressure to fill it up is definitely the easiest time to get slotted in.
4. Learn to moderate properly. The number of speakers who can moderate well and conduct a session is much smaller than you think. Everyone wants to share their expertise through a session, but if you can learn to be a great moderator that asks questions the audience wants to hear and puts your own ego aside, you can completely control the direction of sessions and make a memorable impact because you managed to focus on the audience and not yourself.                                       
5. Choose the right events. The events you choose can have a big impact in whether you can get approved to speak or not. If you can find events where you are not going to be the same as everyone else there and may have a different point of view, those are the best events to focus on. Finding local events can also be a great technique, because the conference organizers won't have to worry about paying you to get there.
6. Create a style, not a schtick. A style is the format and type of presentation that you do. I tend to use a lot of visuals and use numbered lists to people can track with me and take notes easily. That is my presentation style. It DOES NOT mean doing the same presentation over and over again - that is boring and pretty soon you will find that your materials is either dated or already heard so it makes you less relevant.
7. Be original. If you cannot share original thinking, don't bother trying to present. Nothing will negatively impact your reputation more than speaking and sharing completely obvious information that everyone has heard before.
8. Value your own time. Saying yes to every speaking opportunity you get may make sense initially, but rapidly you will find that this is not sustainable and sometimes you do need to learn to say no.
9. Participate generously. When you are at an event, people will remember the time you spent with them. As a speaker, they want to hear from you and learn from you, so no matter which event you end up at, make sure you leave enough time to spend networking with the people there.             
10. Get to know the other speakers. Finally, there are great things you can learn from fellow speakers, and this may even lead to the introductions to other events, so try and meet as many fellow speakers as you can.

Being Cranky

Sometimes you know it is going to be one of those kinds of days. You can't find the right clothes to put on. Your team lost the big game the night before. Or you were up all night with a crying baby. The night passes, you wake up the next morning and you're cranky. We all have days like this - and maybe we fight that crankiness with a slightly larger morning cup of coffee. Or by wasting an hour or two surfing around on YouTube instead of working. Cranky is a state of mind, and when you can get enough time passing - you can generally get over it.

If you happen to have a job that requires you to use social media to engage people online though, cranky can turn into a big problem. If you blog when you're cranky, you end up being "snarky." If you tweet when you're cranky, you end up ranting. Even if your crank-inspired snarks and rants are fun to read for a few moments ... that moment is fleeting. Yet while the moment passes quickly, the content remains online forever (or until some freedom-hating supervillian finally perfects a world altering electromagnetic weapon to kill all previously published content on the Internet).

Supervillians aside, the point is that getting cranky online can stick with you for much longer than you imagined it would. And if you engage socially online on behalf of a brand, it can be taken far out of context and cause problems you never anticipated. So amidst the advice you may be reading online about what to blog about and worrying about how to craft the ideal social media strategy to engage your customers, don't forget the most important lesson of all: if you're feeling a bit cranky, skip the blogging or tweeting and just find a few more YouTube videos to watch until you feel better.

PS - I am not cranky (today).