Posted on May 18, 2013 by Chuck Kent
From ethnographers to movie mavens – fun, funny, smart, interesting people to follow on Twitter
NOTE: There’s not the usual song-on-video for today’s #SocialSong Saturday (the #FF alternative)… this week, I’m trying a slightly different musical tribute, and a little fun with Vine.
I got to interview Tribber founder @DinoDogan a month or so ago, and his contention that the “mid level” bloggers are where real influence is to be had rang true then and keeps ringing, not only relative to bloggers but to anyone participating in social media. Oh, it’s not that I don’t enjoy following many people on Twitter who have legions of followers, friends, fans, etcetera. I feel more of a connection – or perhaps its just easier to literally connect with– people whose follower count isn’t anywhere near five or six figures. This week’s cases in point:
@kato42 Kate O’Rouke calls herself a communications generalist, but I especially like the enthographer in her. In fact, she handles PR for @EMACnetwork, the “ethnography-media-arts-culture network.” All of us who present ourselves as brand storytellers might do well to pursue a closer association with those who specialize in understanding humanity through in-depth listening to its stories.
@AimeelWest I’m jumping on the Aimee West bandwagon here. She was the subject of yesterday’s #FollowFriday feature in Spin Sucks. She’s a great example of how you can have a terrific business impact via social media and content marketing without having (I’m guessing here, so I hope I give no offense) a terrific budget. Get the whole scoop on Spin Sucks.
L-R: Kate O’Rourke, Aimee West, Jayne Cherneski, Molly Dedham
@jaynecharneski Jayne Charneski is one of those folks on Twitter who may intrigue me based on just a single tweet, one that suggests a kindred sensibility that makes me follow along. Here’s the tweet that got me (if you haven’t red this Onion piece, it’s a sadly hilarious explanation of why branding ain’t about the logo):
Corporation’s new logo changes everything ow.ly/kW6AJ via @theonion #mrx, #research, #marketing
— jayne charneski (@jaynecharneski) May 17, 2013
@MollyDedham Molly Dedham is all about movies, so that’s an immediate reason to follow as far as I’m concerned. Here’s a fun little mini-conversation we had on Twitter this week.
@creativeoncall that’s Brilliant! Malcolm McDowell will serve behind the counter#kubrickthemepark
— Molly Dedham (@MollyDedham) May 15, 2013
I encourage you all to give ‘em a follow and see what you discover, too. Pleas tune in again next week… given the sorry state of my Vine chops, I think we’ll be going back to regular video.
Posted on May 11, 2013 by Chuck Kent
As a mama’s boy whose Mama is no longer here – and as the husband of a fabulous mother – Mother’s Day can get to me a bit. To avoid going all weepy on you this week (well actually, I indulge myself a bit at the end of this post), I asked two Twitter friends – Kat Gordon and Tom Pick – for suggestions of favorite tweeps who also happen to be great moms on Twitter. (In case you don’t know them, @TomPick runs the blog Webbiquity, where he’s made a name for himself helping people make themselves ubiquitous on the web; @KatGordon, heads the mom-centric agency Maternal Instinct and is a driving force behind @3percentconf.) Here are two suggestions from each (Tom’s first, then Kat’s) of marvelous moms on Twitter:
@esegar Elise Sagar is a Partner at Digital Clarity – and, I’m guessing, a bit like me (the work-at-home Dad) in that she describes herself as “taxi driver and silly mom of 3.” Multi-tasking on the move must be the order of the day.
@MarketingMama Missy Berggren is strategic planner and apparently a very ambitious mom – she’s raising an entire state full of bloggers as the founder and director of the Minnesota Bloggers Conference.
L-R: Elise Segar, Missy Berggren, Randi Zuckerberg, Patty Lennon
@randizuckerberg Randi Zuckerberg, late of Facebook, is founder of Zuckerberg Media and editor of the “wired lifestyle newsletter” @DotComplicated, ,which just posted a piece on tech company TV spots about Moms.
@momgetsalifePatty Lennon – founder of the Mom Gets a Business Conference –isn’t out to be a power mom, but an empowering one. According to here website, she started the become-and-entrepreneur organization to “ answer to the greatest need a woman with children has today – to create wealth with flexibility and freedom.”
This Mother’s Day, give your favorite moms flowers and follows.
Now about that aforementioned bit of mama’s boy self-indulgence. While I was recording this week’s #SocialSong Saturday, I decided to pay homage to a Mom who never sent a single tweet: mine. Happy Mother’s Day to all the great moms out there!
Posted on May 4, 2013 by Chuck Kent
Sometimes the best way to figure out who to follow on Twitter is to simply ask your friends. That’s what I did this week, reaching out to new friend Jay Baer, he of Convince and Convert, The Now Revolution, Social Pros Podcast and – very shortly – the terrific new book (and marketing philosophy) Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help Not Hype [please note: this is NOT an affiliate link, nor do I have any financial interest in this book). You may also remember Jay’s most shining and, I imagine, treasured moment: His mention in The Unrequited Twitter Love Song.
Jay suggested the following folks – all involved with Youtility in some way another – as terrific choices to add to any “following” list:
Finding the link between Content and Content of Your Character?
@tamadear I missed Tamsen Webster’s presentation at Social Slam, thanks to an incessant coughing fit that beset my cold-afflicted body just at that time. Given her Twitter profile and presence, I’m guessing I missed a lot. In addition to her day job as “SVP Content Activation and Resident Skeptic” at Allen-Gerritsen, she is also a “personal chartographer,” which she defines as helping people “find your way – not just a way – to get from here to there.” Her connection with Youtility is as one of the first critical readers of the manuscript, a potentially tough, but invaluable, job.
Social Media Thinking As Big As All Outdoors
@adam_buchanan Is actually the only person in this week’s song I have actually tweeted in the past week. He took note of Jay mentioning that I’ve written a song for the book launch, and an exchange between the three of us ensued. Adam is one of the many people so eager to read Youtility that they’ve pre-ordered it – he’s even mentioned possibly giving it to his whole social media team @Cabelas, the leading outfitter for all things outdoors. Best of all, he seems to be wild about fatherhood, which automatically makes him a kindred sprit for me. Adam is a member of Jay’s favorite club… the Youtility “pre-order club.”
L-R: Tamsen Webster, Adam Buchanan, Carrie Morgan, Peg Fitzpatrick
Helping Content Rock and Girls Rule
@morgancarrie Carrie Morgan is on a mission to rock the status quo… as you will see on RockTheStatusQuo.com. She takes the ‘tude seriously, as in her latest blog post “Once Upon a Guitar… Storytelling Tips from Jimi Hendrix’ Ghost (aka Mark Hermann). She runs in the best circles, including Convince and Convert, MarketingProfs and the blogchat she started, #PhxPR. I’m guessing she also just plain runs all over Phoenix in pursuit of her teenage daughters (there’s that parental bonding again… I have two teenage daughters, and therefore admire anyone who volunteers with a not-for-profit called Girls Rule!) According to Jay, Carrie has created some terrific “bonus content” connected to Youility.
Can One Person Fill the 12 Most Important Social Media Roles?
@pegfitzpatrick Peg Fitzpatrick has also created bonus content around Youtility, although I can’t imagine for the life of me when she found the time. Her bio says she works on social media strategy with some guy name Kawasaki, is a social media manager for a bricks and mortar company, Kruessler, Inc., and for the online community 12 Most, and hosts a monthly Twitter chat with well-regarded social-content-idea authors, #MyBookClub. As I say in the song “Hey, can you leave some work for the rest of us!” (Yes, sorry… jealousy rears it’s ugly head.. although it’s always seemed more graphically pointed to say “jealously rears its ugly rear,” but we’ll leave that for another post…)
I look forward to following Jay’s recommendations – and I especially look forward to the release of Youtility. Let me reiterate: I have no financial affiliation with this book or Jay. I do admit to the self-aggrandizing leveraging of that fact I’ve written a song inspired by the book (I’ll be blogging later as to just why and how that came about). My selfish reason for encouraging you to get in on the last days of the pre-order phase for Youtility is that you will then have the chance to have your photo appear in a video based on my song. You. Your business. In a video. Promoted by Jay Baer. How cool would that be?
Posted on April 27, 2013 by Chuck Kent
#SocialSong Saturday No. 22 from Creative on Call, Inc. on Vimeo.
I, no doubt like many of you, follow people on Twitter for multiple reasons. My favorite reason is that they seem to have a compelling combination of professional insight and personal passion in the areas most interesting to me. The Venn Diagram on that (I’ll spare you another lame literal diagram here) has “fresh social-content ideas” overlapping with “people who are crazy about their families”.
It’s only logical, then, that I follow @zenaweist, who I discovered by mining the Twitter lists of @seanmcginnis (BTW, if you’re not poaching people to follow from the list of those whose opinions you trust, you are missing out on one of the easiest, most reliable methods for finding good folks on Twitter). I have not met Zena in the real world, but I appreciate her online as both a social media force (Social Pros Podcast, and her day job as VP of Strategy at Expion) and a mom. You see, my favorite job title in the world is “Dad,” and I resonate with anyone who appears to feel the same.
Time Sensitive Information: Act Before April 30
It’s Zena the Mom who caught my attention this week, because she is sponsoring a Mother’s Day Trunk Show on Stella & Dot, the proceeds of which go to support autism awareness (Zena reports that she has a child on the autism spectrum). So… besides making a purchase myself, I am encouraging all who read this to do the same (my all-pro Mom is gone, but the amazing mother who is my wife needs to unwrap something from me that day). Buy your Mother’s Day gifts by April 30, because that’s when the trunk show ends!
One of the best forms of encouragement is praise, no?
Rather than hector you all with a do-gooder appeal in prose, though, I thought I’d turn to some of the folks on Zena’s KC list – the people she follows in her home town – and see if I can’t serenade them and/or some of there followers into making a Mother’s Day purchase at Zena’s Trunk Show. These also seem like really good folks to follow on Twitter… so here we go!
L-R: Michelle Lamar, Joe Cox, Mike Brown, Ben Smith
@michellelamar Michelle Lamar is the only Mom on the list, so perhaps she can simply forward this post to her kids as an unsubtle hint. I plan to follow Michelle not only because Zena does, but also because she’s a blogger with some serious experience, a marketing manager and, as she describes herself on one of her blogs, Mom on Planet Teen, “a single mother raising teens. So I’m living the dream.”
@benasmith Ben Smith lists Lawrence, Kansas as his locale, but Zena includes him with her KC favorites. He leads an agency called Social:IRL, which is to say Social In Real Life. I always appreciate people who are working to integrate the power of social online, offline and every line. Besides that, Ben refers to himself as a Brit in Kansas, and given the anglophilic nature of my whole family (see my post from spring break in England), well, that’s enough to seal the deal.
@joenormal I’m guessing that the “normal” part of Joe Cox’s Twitter handle may be a bit tongue in cheek (you be the judge, per his posts on Tumblr). By day he’s the Social Media Director for, of all things… an ad agency, @barkleyus! I am always heartened when the ad biz, from which I hail, is looking like it’s finally going to “get it” (say that it’s so, Joe). What really hooked me into following Joe, however, is the visual indication that he’s a Goldendoodle guy like me.
@Brainzooming Mike Brown heads up The Brainzooming Group, which bills itself as “the catalyst for business people needing to successfully identify and implement strategic, innovative ideas.” He also Tweets a lot on creativity. And while I’m typically one of those creative people who are skeptical about any seemingly systematic approaches to being creative, Mike regularly does manage to make a lot of good points… like this one (Mike is the one person besides Zena today who I have been following for a while):
Step 1: Strategy. Step 2: Wild Creativity. Don’t reverse the order. ow.ly/hGYkL #creativity #innovation
— Mike Brown (@Brainzooming) April 27, 2013
That’s it for this week… and don’t forget to shop for the Moms or Mums in your life at Zena’s Trunk Show, from the Autism Awareness Collection on Stella & Dot (I opted for the Spirit Bracelet, as below… but don’t tell my wife).
Chuck,
Thanks so much for highlighting some of the fabulous folks I follow from my hometown of Kansas City. You picked some amazing social media mavens and I’m thrilled to say good friends! You are amazing – cold and all!
I so appreciate you giving my online trunk show a shout out as well. Our local chapter of the Autism Society is going to love the check I’ll be giving them at the end of Autism Awareness Month. THANK YOU!
Looking forward to meeting you IRL one of these days!
Zena
You are most welcome… thanks for letting me poach some of the good KC folks from your Twitter list. I hope you make a ton of dough for the Autism Society! Please give a shout when you’re in the Chicago area!
Posted on April 20, 2013 by Chuck Kent
I recently got to collaborate with Mark Schaefer on a new eBook, “The Be Attitudes of Facebook Influence,” based on one of his more popular posts. Besides a terrific opportunity to partner with a premier content creator like Mark, the project introduced me to a few folks that, surprisingly, I hadn’t followed that closely before.
Herewith, I come to sing their praises as folks worthy of more than the same old #FF shout-out:
@jessicanorthey I’m guessing that absolutely no one has ever accused Jessica Northey of being boring. In the eBook, she admonishes all of us to “never ever ever be boring” on Facebook. Good advice in general, if too little headed in social media and content marketing. If you’re looking for a little musical excitement of the country variety, you can always join her on #CMchat.
@JenKaneCo In the eBook, Jennifer Kane counsels that we best build Facebook influence when we “lavish people with attention and empathy,” noting that by giving such we’re likely to receive it, too. I got to see Jennifer present the best (and funniest) presentation at Social Slam 2013, wherein her attention to empathy meant she anticipated our boredom with PowerPoint bullet-point presentations, and instead delivered a visually fun, funny talk.
L-R: Jessica Northey, Jennifer Kane, Billy Mitchell, Nate Riggs
@billymitchell1 In my experience, its still relatively uncommon to find agency guys who not only claim to understand social media and content marketing, but actually demonstrate that knowledge through use. Billy Mitchell, creative partner at MLT Creative, does just that. His counsel in the eBook is simply “Annoy friends with hype and you’re history.”
@nateriggs Nate Riggs makes a great point about building community on Facebook… namely, ya’ gotta be there when your fans want you. Nate seems like a pretty practical-and-to-the-point kind of guy (which we can all use more of), as in one of his latest blog posts on the need to find your niche.
I’m not completely against #FF
As a parting aside, I did get to have a little #FF fun yesterday on Spin Sucks as the guest “song blogger;” please stop by if you haven’t seen/heard it.
Wow. What a great way to start my Saturday. Thanks for including me in your “Social Song Saturday” Chuck. It’s an honor to be mentioned in song and among such an impressive group. I will stay tuned for more and look back at your earlier tunes too. I love finding new social media brainiacs and maniacs to follow. Thanks again!
You can blame that darn Mark Schaefer… he seems to attract some of the most interesting folks, yourself including. Thanks for taking the time to comment.. I hope you have time to check out some of the other iterations. Cheers!
Visit the only blog that comes with free coffee.
I would make a song for you Chuck, but, as discussed, that’s not really in my wheelhouse. Perhaps a sonnet. I’ll get crackin’.
Thanks for everything, Chuck. You are an amazing human.
That’s funny… in an interview at a major ad agency, at the age of 22, I was told “Hey, I really like your work.. I’m just not sure how human you are…” [If he thought I was bad then, he should get a load of me now] Marketing has needed a change (of heart) for quite a while. I think that’s at the core of what you’re talking about in the new book… at least it’s what excites/encourages me… not just a change of methods but of overall mindset.
This was epic.
Glad you like it. BTW, I appreciated your post “Who took a chance on you.” http://photopoach.com/2013/03/13/who-took-a-chance-on-you/
Pretty rad, Adam…and well deserved.
Chuck,
I can’t tell you how much that made my day. First to be recommended by Jay (awesome) and then to be part of your #socialsong. Fantastic! You have some serious skills.
One tiny thing, my chat is #MyBookClub, tricky little things those hashtags.
I was waiting for someone to figure out that I have all the social media jobs, now my secret is out!
Thanks.. and also for the proofreading (it’s corrected now). I figured if Jay could sing your praises, I could, too
Very creative! I love it.
What an awesome way to bring in the weekend. Love this idea!
Chuck, this totally made my weekend! Thank you so, so much for including me in it! I was proud to help Jay with the project. If I knew this would be the result, I would have been TWICE as excited.
Being a very lucky girl, Jay graciously agreed to be in MY first book! Digital Haystack is all about how PR pros can wrap social, search and content marketing into their traditional public relations tactics. Jay will be in the book chatting about how to choose the right social platform for your goals/objectives. He is totally wonderful, as usual!!
No word yet on timing from my book agent, but I’m hoping Digital Haystack will be on bookshelves by the end of the year.
Again, a huge thanks for the dose of Saturday morning humor! It went perfect with my coffee. =D
Keep me posted on Digital Haystack (great title, btw).