Straight Talk Blog
Ted RubinJoining Collective Bias as Chief Social Marketing Officer…
I’ve been working in digital marketing since 1997, and each year I believe more strongly in the power of relationships for effectively connecting brands with consumers. Back then, I never could have imagined the incredible connection-building possibilities provided...
The Gift Mom Really Wants – A Better World For Moms
Last year, $14.6 billion was spent on Mother's Day presents. Just think what 1% of that could do if given to a charity Moms (and Dads) love! Thanks to Holly Pavlika’s Moms4Moms initiative fueled by the incredible support of the online and offline Moms community,...
The Social Media budget is there…so now what?!?
In the past three years, social media has gone from being a novelty, to test and try out, to being serious business. Companies are now coming on board and showing their new opinion of the true business value of social media by opening their budgets and allocating...
New York and Chicago Social Media Panels featuring JetBlue, Microsoft, CDW, and Alberto Culver
Zuberance’s Brand Advocacy Series is coming to Chicago on May 11 and New York on May 17 for social media panel discussions on “How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales.” The event series brings together leading brands, marketers, and influencers to...
Transparency is not optional
We want to believe that with a careful multi-faceted marketing strategy, we can protect our brand message and keep it from getting diluted or changed as it gets further from our reach. The truth is, there are many things you cannot control about your brand…...
Moms4Moms… and the kick-off for Moms4Moms Day
What I love most about the Moms community, online and off, is the natural tendency toward helping others... not "what can this do for me" and more like "how can I give of myself to others. More than any other community the "brand" message that has organically...
Spending time with my girls is…
something I put before all else. They are teenagers now and being a divorced Dad it can be challenging to continue to reach out, put them first, and maintain this in the face of their occasional lack of interest and the roadblocks so easily put in place by their Mom...
Face-to-face Customer Service Still Matters
I recently wrote about the dangers of disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel … and the importance of INTEGRATING your brand messages across all channels. We also need to make sure...
Being a Dad
What inspires me to move beyond the limitations and obstacles of being a divorced parent in a culture traditionally designed for shared parenthood is the love of my children and a desire to not only be a part of their lives, but to have influence on how they think,...
Q&A: How to drive measurable ROI from social media NOW
Courtney Velasquez, Social Fabric Community Director, interviewed John Andrews, Collective Bias (CB) Founder/CEO, and Ted Rubin and Dave Henry of the CB Board of Advisors to understand how brands and retailers can measure social media ROI, engage in shopper listening...
Q&A: How to drive measurable ROI from social media NOW
Courtney Velasquez, Social Fabric Community Director, interviewed John Andrews, Collective Bias (CB) Founder/CEO, and Ted Rubin and Dave Henry of the CB Board of Advisors to understand how brands and retailers can measure social media ROI, engage in shopper listening...
Q&A: How to drive measurable ROI from social media NOW
Courtney Velasquez, Social Fabric Community Director, interviewed John Andrews, Collective Bias (CB) Founder/CEO, and Ted Rubin and Dave Henry of the CB Board of Advisors to understand how brands and retailers can measure social media ROI, engage in shopper listening...
You can Rock the World… through your Female Consumers
“If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the world,” says Aileen Lee in her recent TechCrunch guest post, “Why Women Rule the Internet.” This declaration is music to my ears and one of the primary reasons I have joined...
Social Media Strategy: What doesn’t work
You know what doesn’t work for a social media strategy? Not being social. It might sound like common sense, but all too often, being social is overlooked in a social media strategy. It’s not enough to just start accounts with all the most popular social media tools...
Authentic Feedback — are you really getting it?
Market research can be tricky because people have a tendency toward giving you the answers they think you want. It is simply human nature, and something we marketers must pay attention to. In the past, the solution to avoiding this skewed feedback has been to provide...
Make Your Customers Feel at Home
In the physical world, when our trusted and valued friends come to visit our house, we often welcome them by saying, “Come in…make yourselves at home!” In the virtual world, do you do the same thing? When customers and prospects visit your online site, do they feel...
Social Media Metrics-what meets your “Conditions of Satisfaction”?
Many people are finally realizing that social media is serious business. Not “serious” as in stuffy, fun-resistant, and devoid of personality, but “serious” as in something that is of great value to our companies and needs to be treated as such. What is one of the...
No more mixed messages: Integrate Social Media Marketing!
Social media marketing to most in the C-suite is still a campaign-based tactic, viewed and managed separately, but it really should be integrated. Social media marketing needs to be woven into the fabric of all marketing channels and strategically managed from a...
ROR: Return on Relationship™ in Education
In the last post I was honored to speak with Ted Rubin about his take on what it means for our children to achieve in life and how parents, schools and communities support that achievement. As mentioned, Mr. Rubin is the creator of the term Return on Relationship™...
“Influencers Want to be Influenced”
Let’s face it… customers don’t become influencers in order to champion brands out of the goodness of their hearts, or because of a brilliantly-designed logo or a couple coupons they can download from the internet. Customers become influencers because something about...
Return on Relationship™: The New Measure of Success
ReturnOnRelationship.com Social media is quickly becoming a way of life… and a way of business as more and more companies are realizing they need to integrate social media into their marketing strategies. We can’t, however, expect to do “business as usual” and...
Advocacy drives “Social Sampling”
Originally posted at ZuberRants Kleenex made waves with its recent “Softness Worth Sharing campaign,” which encouraged people to have FREE Kleenex sample packs sent to friends and family. Earlier this month, a reported 1 million Kleenex packs had been sent on behalf...
My Interview for the “Let Children Achieve” Blog…
Achievement expresses itself in as many unique forms as there are students. If we remove achievement from its current cookie cutter test definition, how do we define it? Read the rest if this post at Let Children Achieve
My Interview for the "Let Children Achieve" Blog…
Achievement expresses itself in as many unique forms as there are students. If we remove achievement from its current cookie cutter test definition, how do we define it? Read the rest if this post at Let Children Achieve
My Interview for the "Let Children Achieve" Blog…
Achievement expresses itself in as many unique forms as there are students. If we remove achievement from its current cookie cutter test definition, how do we define it? Read the rest if this post at Let Children Achieve
When Customer Service drops the ball, who do you call… Twitter ???
Traditional customer service certainly gets its share of bad-mouthing: endless pre-categorized “service” menu selections followed by long wait times to speak with a customer representative, plus the constant risk of getting disconnected, or the call dropping in the...
We need to ask the Moms!
Originally posted at SheSpeaks The recent Yahoo study suggesting that Dads rule the grocery shopping cart is causing a stir in the marketing community with article headlines like “Time to Rethink Your Message: Now the Cart Belongs to Daddy.” The study shows that out...
Long-term Advocacy Enhanced by Emotional Connection
One of the most valuable returns of the social media proliferation is the renewed fervor around Brand Advocacy. The truly remarkable thing about Brand Advocates is that they proactively recommend brands and productswithout getting paid…but if they are not getting...
Who Owns Your brand?
Originally posted at SheSpeaks In the past, marketing owned the brand, using a tightly controlled set of messages piped through carefully selected channels to ensure brand “ownership” through control….but that’s no longer the case. The increasing integration of...
Dads Often Set Themselves up to Get the Short-End with their Children in Divorce… Beware and Step-up!
The problem with Dads and Divorce is that the vast majority of Dads are not the custodial parent and therefore, no matter the Legal Custody status (which for many is that both have full Joint Legal Custody) in effect the Dad has little or no control on what goes on...