Let's take a quick look at the qualifications to be a TV news person. First, you must be able to read at a sixth grade level. Second, you can't be a deaf mute as you have to speak. Last, people can't gag at the sight of you. Apparently, she no longer meets the last one, and someone committed the crime of telling her.
I'm not really in favor of bullying. I just despise how its definition has morphed. Bullying is no longer a kid getting the crap beaten out of him. It is also little Susie's idiot mother complaining that someone hurt Susie's feelings on Facebook. The morphing of the definition of bullying is desensitizing us to real bullying. A kid getting the crap beaten out of him should be a legal matter. Susie's problem could be solved with a little effective parenting. We ignore stories of bullying, because most of them are garbage. Real bullying gets lost in the noise. Political correctness breeds unintended consequences, as usual.
A couple weeks ago I talked to a public relations professional I had met through the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce. I have been looking for a PR person to perform some work publicizing the blog. The conversation turned to news releases. She told me that local newspapers no longer worked, and she wasn't sure why. I know why – just one word – Facebook.
Facebook has killed local papers. We no longer have to plow through pages of ads for real estate agents, dentists, and cleaning services. Yes – also CPA's. We get news about our friends and neighbors without the clutter of “cat rescued from tree by courageous fireman” stories. Facebook filters the flow of information, so that we get just the news we want. Why wouldn't a PR person know this?
We talked a bit more and decided that she would become familiar with the blog, and then call me to discuss ways we might work together. When she called a week later, she told me she wasn't comfortable with some of the language in the blog. I think the word, vagina, offended her. If you watch any prime time TV, vagina is a mild word compared what you hear on sitcoms in 2012 on general network TV, let alone cable.
She is living in the 1960's, and that's bad news for her clients. If you aren't able to meet your customers' needs, because you're stuck in the past, you won't be in business long. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign is a perfect example how being behind your customers is a losing proposition.
Romney is getting whipped by President Obama for one overriding reason. The vast majority of women will vote for the President. They aren't basing their votes on economic or foreign policy. They are voting against Romney's connections to the religious right. Women are largely in favor of choice in abortion and gay marriage. Romney is missing a market he could win, women, because he's marketing to people stuck in the 1600's, when a hot time on the town meant burning a few witches. Romney wins the religious right at the expense of losing his ass in the general election by missing the market for female votes.
Everyday, I hear from business owners that they don't have time for Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Not considering these marketing avenues is living in the past. I'm not saying that social media is the answer to all your marketing challenges. In past posts, I told you what I think about the place of social media in a marketing plan. However, you must at least consider the relevance of social media to your business.
For instance, if you are a restaurant or bar owner, you must have a social media presence, or your marketing plan is stuck in the last century. Facebook and Twitter are marvelous places to distribute coupons encouraging customer loyalty and repeat customers. These media are also less expensive than old media marketing such as newspaper and radio ads. You don't even have printing costs.
You may correctly reject using social media for your business, but you haven't rejected it intelligently without considering it. I don't know why anybody would “like” a Facebook page for a funeral home – or for that matter a CPA firm. But we have at least considered social media. Obviously, I'm heavily involved.
Here are some suggestions for struggling social media newbies. Make it fun. For me, Facebook isn't purely, or even mostly, business. I am connected to high school and college friends, relatives, and a lot of clients. Facebook personalizes me to clients. They learn that my life only mostly revolves around the IRS. This information exchange works both ways. I learn about them as well. I see a bigger picture of their lives than I get from just preparing tax returns. I post a few business related items, but not many.
Find out what social media outlets work for you. I have been immersed in Twitter for nearly a month. Twitter has a culture totally different from Facebook and LinkedIn. Everything revolves around your followers. Many Twitterati equate number of followers with relevance. You can even buy followers by the tens of thousands. After a month, I learned the importance of the gross number of followers – absolutely none. Followers aren't listeners. You can have 200 hundred thousand followers, who don't read a single one of your tweets. They are following you, because Twitter etiquette demands that you follow them in exchange. Tweets can be a form of social media masturbation. I recommend that you try Twitter and explore how it might work for you. My guess is it won't, but you don't know until you evaluate it.
Keep your time commitment to social media reasonable. If Marion Barry could get addicted to sex, you can become addicted to social media. If it isn't fun for you, or it doesn't provide a return on your time invested, stop.
Here are two marketing terms you need to understand in the 21st century: push marketing and pull marketing. Print, radio, and television advertising are push media. You create a message and push it out to a mass audience. Social media is pull media. You have to attract and earn the attention of your audience.
Traditional push marketing bombards your potential customers with repetition and volume. Ever wonder why TV ads are louder than the programs you watch? Advertisers beat down your inattention with volume. Push marketing is expensive, because it relies on brute force. When you buy a newspaper ad, you are buying eyeballs – mostly unwilling ones. Push media is a numbers game. Winning is buying enough eyeballs to find enough interested eyeballs to justify the marketing expense.
Pull marketing is much less expensive, at least in terms of out of pocket costs. However, it is incredibly labor intensive. Pull marketing works to engage customers voluntarily. You can't force someone to follow your company on Facebook. You have to attract them with some compelling offer. The great advantage of pull marketing is that people choose to be engaged with your business. You aren't raping their attention. Winning is converting engaged followers to customers. Pull media is hard, regardless of what the six billion social media experts on the planet tell you.
If you aren't considering and trying social media marketing for your business, your marketing is so 1990's. To succeed in the 21st century, you must understand where both push and pull media fit in your marketing plan and budget.
This week the most important presidential race in the Washington DC area wasn't Mitt versus Barack. It was the race of the giant president head mascots at Washington Nationals baseball games. Each game, Abe Lincoln, Tommie Jefferson, George Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt race around the warning track. In Milwaukee, you get racing bratwurst. In DC, you get giant presidents' heads.
In the time since the Washington Nationals moved to DC from Montreal, Teddy has never won the race. Most of the time, he doesn't even finish the race getting distracted by cute women or tripped up by opposing mascots. This past week, the Nationals clinched the National League East division title. In celebration, Teddy got his win. I can't begin to explain why the entire metro area cares so much for a gross caricature of one of our greatest presidents, but we do – even me. Congratulations to Teddy and the Nationals and best luck in the playoffs. I'll be there.
Thanks for reading! As always, for real tax and accounting advice, please visit our main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com. Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us. If you don't get that reference, it's from the best cop show of all time, Hillstreet Blues.
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