I have been looking forward to today’s Livefyre Q&A with Danny Brown all year.

When I learned he and Sam Fiorella were writing Influence Marketing, I got him on the calendar as quickly as I could because, even though I hadn’t yet read the book, I knew it was going to be a good one.

Danny is a staple in the marketing world. He was one of the first friends I made through social media and he remains a close friend today (unless you take that last photo in the series literally).

I knew him way back when he ran Bonsai Interactive Marketing and then later joined Jugnoo and today he is working with a crack jack team to build ArcCompany.

He’s one of the smartest writers on the web, he has a brain that continually questions, he isn’t afraid to offer a differing opinion, and he is as loyal as they come.

I’ve had the great pleasure of speaking with him, traveling with him, and conspiring with him.

With the publication of Influence Marketing, he and Sam offer another look at the world of automated clout tools. They provide refreshing thinking on how you can reach the right influencers for your organization without relying on scores and hoards of followers.

Today’s Livefyre Q&A

At noon ET (that’s 11:00 CT, 10:00 MT, and 9:00 PT for those of you who can’t do time zones), Danny is going to be hanging out in the comments so you can ask him anything and everything about the book, his feeling on the automated tools (such as Klout or PeerIndex), how he recommends you find the right influencers, what tools are available that truly work, or even about his wife, who is a kick butt author in her own right.

In order to participate, all you have to do is:

• Make sure you have a Livefyre account or be ready to sign in with one of your social networks.
• Set a reminder for noon ET today.
• Order the book so you can help Danny and Sam out, but also get your learn on.
• Create a list of questions.
• Come back here, scroll to the bottom, and write a comment in the form of a question. As soon as you hit “post comment,” Danny will see it and reply to you. You can even join the conversation around questions others are asking, if you like.

We’ll be here for an hour so you can join us the entire time or step in and out during the hour. It’s entirely up to you; just make sure you’re here before 12:59.

Win a Copy

Those of you who participate in today’s Livefyre Q&A (even if you’re late to the party, but not if you’re an Arment Dietrich employee) will be entered in a random drawing for a free copy of the book.

We bought two copies and will give them away, but you have to actually leave a comment, ask a question, or participate in the chat to be entered in the drawing. Otherwise we won’t know you were here.

Get ready with your questions and join the conversation. And don’t fear! If you missed the live portion of this, we’ll keep the drawing open until midnight PT so you still have time to get in your questions.

Former Guests and Who’s Next

For former guests, check out Margie Clayman, Sarah Robinson, Mark Story, Beth Hayden, Sarah Evans, Stanford Smith, Chris Brogan, C.C. Chapman, and Mitch Joel.

And following is the lineup through the end of the year so mark your calendars!

Same bat time, same bat channel.

• July 24 – Chuck Hemann
• August 21 – Jay Baer
• September 18 – DJ Waldow
• October 23 – Tom Martin
• November 13 – Me! (to talk about Spin Sucks, the book, and give away a few copies!)
• December 18 – TBD

See you today at noon!

The post Join Danny Brown for a Special Livefyre Q&A Today appeared first on Spin Sucks.

So this may come as a bit of a shock, but I’m gonna do a little preaching on the Second Commandment, social media style.

For those of you who need a refresher:

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…”

Before I get down to the serious preaching, let me give you some context.

Bow Down to Bad Data

First, the odd case of Mary Meeker. I heard about it via the San Francisco Chronicle. Meeker, who apparently is a big deal (a partner at the venture capital Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), did her annual Internet Trends presentation at the All Things D conference.

One of the things she told people: Smartphone users check their phones an average of 150 times daily. The issue? It appears the number comes from nowhere. But despite the problems outlined by Jeff Elder, the statistic is all over the web.

Social Media Saviors

Secondly, a post on the Forbes website about social media uberdude Gary Vaynerchuk and his new ideas, titled “Why Gary Vaynerchuk’s New Social Media Strategy Should Change The Way You Do Business.”

What really threw me was this quote:

He’s redeployed an employee at VaynerMedia, his social media consultancy, to “shadow my life” by following him at conferences and key local events to record his remarks and turn them into social media content. “I’ve built the infrastructure around me to become a greater content provider,” he says. “I have someone calling me at the end of the day – there’s now someone in my life pestering me for content.”

I found the image of someone following Vaynerchuk around capturing his thoughts and “transcribing his remarks into social media” ludicrous. But when I scrolled down to the comments, I found…

• “I have a great amount of respect for Gary Vaynerchuk, the guy really gets social media – I had a fantastic experience with him where he called me up at 1am to sing me a lullaby following an interaction on Twitter…and yes I created content. I have heard other people talk about the idea of having someone capture their thoughts throughout the day, so it is not as far out there as some may think.”

• “Kevin hit the nail on the head with this article. Gary V is amazing. His book “Crusth IT!” is a must read. Gary started as a little kid understanding to accomplish your dreams you must work VERY hard. He is a perfectly example of the American dream. If u r in to social media follow everything Gary says to do!!”

• “Gary V is right on. I especially like his perspective on micro-content and the many forms of communicating through video or music – it’s not just about being a great writer anymore but being able to communicate your message in (sic) through all the great social media vehicles is becoming increasingly more important in the B2B world. The other great point is you need to re-prioritize your time (hey, maybe less meetings) to invest in social media no matter what your role is in your company.”

• “My 2 cents: One can NOT argue with success.”

And when Scott Monty — no minor figure in social media either — wrote a post detailing his incredulity, he included the following:

• “To be clear, I like Gary and consider him a friend. This is in no way a personal attack; I just happen to disagree with his prediction and thinking, based on what I’ve read.“

Monty went on to say a scheme like this was “the last thing the world needed;” a position he moderated after Vaynerchuk explained himself on Twitter, “Yeah some confusion most likely my fault for sure, but u should know me better, its more not to miss things than to force things…”

Thou Shalt Not Believe Everything You Read

We love social media success stories. Perhaps too much. Perhaps so much that even when they say stupid things, we cheer them. And perhaps so much that when someone decides to criticize them, they feel compelled to preface the criticism with sentences like “this is in no way a personal attack…” because the anticipated reaction is a firestorm of criticism from the army of Vayniacs or otherwise cutely-named followers who will defend the honour of their hero.

Just because someone has a good idea once doesn’t mean ALL their ideas are good. Just because someone has a good track record as an analyst doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong or make stupid mistakes.

When someone commented on the Vaynerchuk Forbes article “My 2 cents: One can NOT argue with success,” I responded, “Yes you can. And you should.”

I meant it. Gary Vaynerchuk is an undeniable phenomenon. Does that make everything he says worthy of support?

In a fast-paced world such as social media, it’s easy to listen to the emphatic people, the ones with the profile, the ones who go to the hot conferences, and are friends with the other important people. But NONE of that means they’re right about everything. And it does nobody any good to blindly parrot their statements.

And if you think my argument is full of more holes than a piece of cheesecloth…tell me so!

Peace be with you, social media brothers and sisters.

The post Social Media Success and the Second Commandment appeared first on Spin Sucks.

“You can’t catch a fish if you don’t put the bug in the water.”

On Saturday, I went out for an early morning bike ride so I could get in the miles on the lakefront without fighting foot traffic later in the day.

At the turnaround spot, I decided to go away from my usual Pandora station and listen to a podcast. I turned on Jason Konopinski’s Riffing on Writing. His latest episode was with my friend and former advisor, Brad Farris.

First, to the two them: I CAN HEAR YOU!

Now on to everyone else.

Word vs. WordPress

As Jason is wont to do, he led Brad down a path about content creation. While Brad doesn’t write for a living, nor does he enjoy it all that much, he does create quite a bit of content for Enmast, a community for small business owners, its blog, and a newsletter.

During the conversation, they ridiculed me because I can open WordPress, type a blog post, and publish it…all within an hour (which is precisely what I’m doing right now).

It turns out, that’s not so common.

But the conversation went from there to tools they both use (you’ll have to listen to learn what they are) and how to get content created when it doesn’t come so naturally.

Brad said something really interesting about content creation in Word. He said (and I’m paraphrasing) he uses Word to create strategy documents for clients, which tend to be very left-brained and logical.

So when he opens Word, he has a hard time turning off that side of his brain to be creative and write something people will want to read if they’re not paying him to write it.

It made me wonder if that’s not the case for a lot of people.

I love writing in WordPress because I can add links, optimize, categorize, add images, and tag the post all at once. I’ve always looked at writing it somewhere else and moving it into WordPress as an extra step.

But what if you hate the interface (which Jason and Brad both said they did) for writing?

Tools for Writing Blog Posts

Following are several tools for writing blog posts.

1. Scrivener. I love Scrivener. It’s how I’m writing Spin Sucks (the book) and how I’ll write any longer form content that is soon to come. I don’t know how it would work for shorter form content, but I say it’s worth a shot.
2. Google Docs. I still haven’t caught the Google Docs fever, but I know lots of people prefer it. You can write directly in there, have an editor review it without sending attachments back and forth, and then finalize before transferring it.
3. Movable Type. This one is particularly good if you have multiple authors. While it’s a little more advanced because you can actually build your website on it and then use the platform for publishing, it does give you the option to only write blog posts with it.
4. Pen and paper. I know it sounds silly, but it works for many people. Brad said he uses an app on his phone to keep his blog post ideas. I actually keep mine in a hardbound journal with a bicycle on the front (seen above). I carry it with me everywhere I go because when I have an idea, I want to be sure I track it in the same spot as all the other ones.
5. WriteApp. I like this one for those of you who get distracted easily. It will shut down all of your distractions and not let you back at them until the time you’ve predetermined is up.
6. WordPress. We’ve covered this, so I won’t say anything more than it’s how I write my blog posts.
7. MarsEdit. When Geoff Livingston and I were traveling nonstop together last year, I watched him create many a blog post in MarsEdit. I never really got the hang of using it (it felt easier to use WordPress), but he swears by it. You can publish to your blog directly from there so it’s not a two-step process like many of these others.

But the most important tool for writing blog posts? Write every day. Even if you don’t publish every day, you can’t call yourself a writer if you don’t write every, single day.

It’s the only way to get better and it’s the only way to find your voice.

Because, as Brad said at the end of the podcast, “You can’t catch a fish if you don’t put the bug in the water.”

The post Seven Tools for Writing Blog Posts appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Do you know how to tell your brand’s story on that social network?

Are you engaging your audience, even in 140 characters or less?

The limitations of Twitter are no excuse for not putting storytelling to work, especially when you consider the ways others are turning it into a powerful tool.

With that in mind, here is a look at ways to use storytelling on the real/time, 24/7 social network.

Literally—To Tell a Story

Using Twitter to tell a long, detailed story might not seem like an obvious application, but take a look at Storify or at the hashtag #afternoonTwitterTale to see it in action.

Author Clinton Yates coined the hashtag, which signals a tweet-by-tweet narrative that gets posted during one afternoon.

Yates’s social stories have included “Why I Love Baseball” and “A Junkie Named Raymond,” among others.

How You Might Use Storytelling Literally

Even if you don’t start posting afternoon Twitter stories, here’s something to take away from Yates’s example: No tweet is an island.

Instead of looking at tweets only as individual, self-contained updates, look at them as parts of a greater, larger whole.

When you can’t share a full story in one tweet, consider spreading the story across a few back-to-back tweets instead.

Creatively—To Tell a Story in a New Way

In Amanda Cosco’s article at Social Times, she argues, “If we’re the social media generation, it’s not that we’re losing the opportunity for story, it’s that we’re telling our stories differently.”

Stories today are about new things: Specific industries or businesses, or even social media itself. Stories spread in new ways and are less packaged and more constant. You’re always telling your story on social media, more and more with every tweet.

What Creative Storytelling Looks Like on Twitter

Personal branding is, at its essence, a form of storytelling. With every update and link, you are telling the social stories of you and your brand. You are showing your followers who you are and what you find interesting. For this reason, the best social media engagement involves thought. Consider what you want to communicate, and what you want to be identified with.

Consistently—As a Way to Reinforce Your Message

Whether you’re the mattress king or the mortgage lender home buyers trust, Twitter is a great place to reinforce your message.

You have advertising, you have email marketing, you have a blog — and with Twitter, you have another powerful tool for telling your followers, again, why they can count on you.

Keys to Reinforcing Your Message

On social media as in any marketing effort, consistency is key. Determine your voice and tone, and stick to them. By fulfilling the expectations you’ve set, you not only reinforce your message, but also build credibility.

Personally—To Let Your Audience Get to Know You

Here’s the most popular way to use Twitter to tell a story: Sharing personal details from your life. Even when you blog for business, you’re still writing for people, and people like to hear personal stories. If you’re the face of your brand, be a memorable face. Share what you’re doing, what intrigues you, what you’re learning, and so on.

A Warning about Personal Details

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know there’s a line when it comes to sharing personal information online.

So here’s a word of caution: Stick to information you’re comfortable with the entire world knowing, and look for ways to make it relevant to your overall message.

Do you engage in some form of storytelling online, either intentionally or unintentionally? What do you like or dislike about brands that use Twitter to share their stories? What do you wish you would see?

The post Social Stories: How to Use Storytelling on Twitter appeared first on Spin Sucks.

I first met Arthur in the same way I’ve met many of you…here on this blog.

As the vice president of public relations for our industry’s trade organization – the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) – Arthur had the unenviable job of answering to more than 20,000 professionals.

Professionals like me who are extremely vocal about what the organization is (or is not) doing for the industry. Professionals who think they know best. Professionals who have a platform and a megaphone.

In May of 2011, when some of our peers from Burson-Marsteller were found to have created a whisper campaign against Google on behalf of Facebook, I was on a rampage about kicking them out of PRSA and not allowing them to continue to work in the field.

It was Arthur who called me to explain, while my efforts were noble, PRSA is a membership organization and not a regulatory one so there wasn’t much they could do.

He was the one who talked me off the ledge and helped me soften my tone…and even engaged in many months-long discussion about whether or not we could regulate the industry so those things didn’t happen.

He led the charge to redefine what it is that we do…taking on a huge project as the previous definition was 30 years old and many of were very active in how to redefine what we do not for today, but for the future.

I remember seeing him at a reception during the middle of the project and asking him how it was going. He said, with a grin and a twinkle in his eye, “Let’s just say I could use a bottle of scotch.”

Scotch he received, which ingratiated me to him for life.

An accredited member of PRSA, of Counselors Academy, and both an agency leader and a corporate professional, Arthur spent his entire career years talking the vocal PR pros off the ledge with humor and a booming laugh that was infectious.

For my friends who knew him well – Greg Pitkoff, Ken Jacobs, and Keith Trivitt – I’m very sorry for your loss.

For his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Sophia, your husband and father meant a great deal to our industry. He will be sorely missed.

For information on the memorial, PRSA will update here as they learn more.

The post Rest in Peace, Arthur Yann appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there!

This is the 36th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter (Honora, A Better Mess), Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), and me!

For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.

This week we have thoughts on how we consume media, injustice in the legal system, and how America is losing its way.

5by5 | Bionic #46: Consumption is Changing

Michael on Information. A thoughtful and interesting conversation between Myke Hurley and Matt Alexander on the ways we consume information on the web. This is particularly timely in light of the imminent demise of Google Reader and offers insights into the shift from self-curated-news to service-curated consumption.

After Innocence: Exoneration in America

Howie on When Justice Goes Wrong. We have a very unequal justice system biased against poor people and minorities. Often that just means guilty rich people go free. But there are times they convict innocent people and listening to these stories of exoneration sometimes after years in jail was very moving.

How America Lost its Way

Gini on America’s Downfall. If you travel outside of the United States, you get accustomed to hearing things such as, “Why is there so much crime in Chicago?” And “What is America’s fascination with guns?” And “How does it feel to be slipping out of your leadership position among countries in the world?” Really, people around the globe say these things to you and it becomes pretty commonplace to hear. In this article, Niall Ferguson argues we’re losing our way because it’s hard to do business here, our institutions need fixing, and we have much more red tape than some of the more scrappy countries.

Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?

The post The Three Things, Edition 36 appeared first on Spin Sucks.

I both love and hate summer. I love it because of summer hours and riding my bike outside and getting a really terrible cycling tan, which renders wearing sundresses impossible.

But I hate it because no one is around and it takes about 16,000 times longer to get any work accomplished. I guess I should be thankful for the extra time to get some more strategic business things accomplished, huh?

That said, I spent Saturday through Tuesday in Austin (where it was 1,000 degrees with a gazillion degrees humidity) at Counselors Academy. It gave me time to think, really think, about the future of Arment Dietrich, how Spin Sucks folds into the continued growth there, and the new and exciting things we can offer you.

The biggest thing I’m having to practice now is patience. It’s hard when you’re excited about your company’s vision to not want to do everything at once. Which, of course, will fail, but still.

While I ride my bike and think more about the future of these businesses, I’ll leave you Gin and Topics.

This week’s videos are brought to you by Aimee West, Karen Wilson, Mr. D., Lindsay Bell, and Dick Carlson.

5. What Kind of Asian are You? You begin watching this and think it might be a bit racist and then it is and it’s brilliantly done and you will laugh. Be sure to watch past the credits for the bloopers. The woman is hilarious!

4. Big Rooster Scares Reporter. I don’t know what is more funny about this: The reporter screaming like a little girl or his production team laughing hysterically at him. I mean, really. He’s a grown man.

3. Mean Tweets, the NBA Edition. Oh Jimmy Kimmel. How I love you so. He has NBA stars read some of the mean tweets people have sent to them. I’m pretty sure I am the one who sent the tweet Shaq reads, but tell me it’s not true!

2. Pub Loo Shocker. I don’t know why I think this is so funny, but it is! It’s an ad from Leo Burnett about how impaired just one drink may make you. It’s pretty powerful and it will make you laugh.

1. Pug Bowling. It takes a couple of minutes to get into this one, but stick with it. With hardwood floors, toy bowling pins, Pledge, a laser points, and a pug, you get to see the most amazing bowling ever played.

Have a great weekend!

The post Gin and Topics: Mean Tweets and Our Preconceived Notions appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Rob Biesenbach has been hanging out in the comments for a few months now and just wrote his first guest post about storytelling last week.

In the post, he talked about how he learned to tell a story through writing from Second City.

Improv Helps Storytelling

This is both intriguing and terrifying to me. The idea the organization that trained comedians such as Tina Fey, John Belushi, Mike Myers, and Steve Carell can help you with your storytelling is intriguing, but getting up there on stage and have to be funny? No, thank you.

Of course, to hear Rob tell it, it’s less about being funny and more about being able to improvise and use what you have. While that’s still a terrifying thought, it does make sense it would help with your storytelling.

Still he’s a Second City trained actor, which is more than most of us can say. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see him on Saturday Night Live in the future and we can all say we knew him when!

We’re All in Show Biz

He’s not just a funny guy. He’s a communicator who worked for Ogilvy PR, but went out on his own nearly 15 years ago.

In his quest to end dull and boring communications, he wrote Act Like You Mean Business: Essential Communication Lessons from Stage and Screen, which provides tips, tools, and techniques to connect with emotion, express ideas visually, and tell better stories.

Like my good friend Martin Waxman, Rob believes we’re all in show biz and he’s out to teach you how to tweak your skills to use Hollywood- or Broadway-like techniques in your communications.

Where to Find Rob Biesenbach

A public speaker, a writer, a communicator, and a funny guy, I highly recommend you introduce yourself to Rob and get to know him.

You can find him on Twitter, Google+, on his blog, Amazon, LinkedIn, or on his “official” site where you can see fancy photos of him and learn he lives in Chicago with his allergies (me too).

The post #FollowFriday: Rob Biesenbach appeared first on Spin Sucks.

“Why would it be?”

“It’s a non-issue.”

“It’s smart marketing.”

“Maybe it’s slightly creepy.”

At the same time, the question does come up. A lot.

So let’s see, when is marketing automation smart, and when do we run the risk of going too far?

What is Marketing Automation?

It’s marketing execution using tools and software that automate repetitive tasks.

Marketers input hypothesis-based criteria and algorithms into the system, which executes a series of scenarios. This increases efficiency, reduces human error, and improves speed of proving/disproving marketing hypotheses (modified definition of the one on Wikipedia).

What is Cheating?

To act dishonestly or unfairly or against pre-agreed upon rules, or a contract, in order to gain an advantage.

What is Creepy?

You know it when you feel it. So will your audiences.

What is Smart Marketing?

Successful marketing has always been technology-dependent, which implies data, algorithms and engines. Even direct mail is automated.

Those highly-praised Target “custom-mailers,” are actually printed by a machine based on an algorithm. The marketers behind it don’t manually, individual-by-individual, send coupons for baby products vs. coupons for back-to-school.

Is it always smart to do so? No. But is it cheating?

Let’s look at social media and inbound marketing the same way: Automation, contracts, and audience response.

Email Marketing

The clear contract: Permission-based marketing. Did the owner of the email address give permission to you to email them?  Do you have a contract? Typically a smart email marketing contract is a commitment to not spam and only share valuable (in their eyes) content.

For example, the agreement we have with our readers is we won’t spam and we’ll send a monthly email with practical digital marketing tips.

You may wonder where CAN SPAM fits in here. It doesn’t. In fact, CAN-SPAM is dubbed “you can spam.”

Those rules state you can email people even without their permission. But that’s an article for another time.

The grey area: Indirect data collection. How about the emails collected from white paper downloads, sweepstake,s and contests?

This is a grey area because in most cases the contract is you get one piece of content for free if you give your email address. But most white paper download rules don’t clearly state how the email addresses will be used. Is that smart marketing or breaking a contract?

The don’ts: Don’t buy addresses. There was no email marketing contract there. You will get a list that’s 60 percent incorrect, and the other 40 percent won’t open the email because they don’t recognize the sender name. You’re wasting time and money, so don’t do it.

Twitter Automation

If you are looking for leads on Twitter you will need some automation. There I said it.

A high-volume content space, requires a high-volume method. Whether you’re using a mentions alerts system, or a follow/unfollow system such as Manageflitter, or a third party app, you are going the automation way. And a dose of automation with the right level of observation is healthy.

The clear contract: Twitter is meant to be an open network. Twitter encourages posting, following, unfollowing, retweeting, DMing, and mentioning anyone you please – as long as you don’t act like a spammer.

Twitter has very clear rules on what this means.

We typically hear of the “bulk follow and unfollow” rule. In fact Twitter discourages following or unfollowing too many users in too short of a period of time, but also discourages posting only updates with links and no personal updates.

Ouch, half of the Twitterverse is in breach of terms!

So, using automation tools to follow, unfollow, and post is fine, as long as it’s not using a spam pattern.

If you are looking for more efficient targeting, go the automation route. And that’s the key to this.

Spammers don’t look for fans. They look for anyone. Spammers don’t look to deliver value, and don’t have contracts. Spammers don’t target. They do everything, in bulk.

If you take a purposeful, targeted approach, in most cases you won’t be breaking rules. In fact, that’s what true marketing automation is, using tools for better targeting and outreach.

The grey area: Auto-messaging and “group tweeting.” Auto-DMs and auto-responses may be in breach of the Twitter terms, falling under the category of posting the same message repeatedly. There may be instances where response scripting is needed (customer service and legal and compliance instances for example).

The group tweeting situation is where you truly, genuinely, want to invite 100 of your Twitter contacts to an event. In fact, the original purpose of Twitter was to facilitate group messaging.

So, should you craft separate messages for each friend, or is it ok to send them all the same message?

Don’ts: Tweet and run. If you’re going to use automation, don’t use it with Q&As. You’ll get the community to talk to you but you’re not there to participate. It’s just not smart marketing.

Publishing: Finding Content and Scheduling

Is it cheating to use an engine to find associate content (such as Zemanta), and is it cheating to pre-schedule publishing of your content?

The clear contract: Compelling content wins. People are attracted to social media accounts and communities that fulfill certain needs, mainly the need to get information, to socialize, and to be validated. Since we can’t perfectly predict when each of our followers is online, it’s best if we evenly spread the content out to provide content for all those needs.

Or you can use automation! You can use Buffer, or Hootsuite auto-scheduling to place your messages in the social stream at the “perfect” time.

The grey area: Obeying copyright. Even with a tool that finds relevant associated content, you still have to be careful about copyright and attribution. Using automation to publish curated content poses some risks.

Want to be safe? Get familiar with – and obey – copyright laws.

The don’ts: Don’t schedule and forget. During two past national tragedies many organizations had pre-scheduled promotional posts. These pre-schedules were left unattended and made said organizations look insensitive, absent and unappealing.

Don’t just schedule and forget. I talked about “feelings” earlier. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. One of our clients, a film director, said it so well, the Friday of the Sandy Hook elementary shooting: “It doesn’t feel right to be out there pimping my movie this weekend.” TV interviews and social media promos got cancelled. And he gained respect through his absence rather than his presence.

So, once a week, ask yourself: Is my pre-schedule still relevant? Do I have an escalation procedure to minimize the risks of automation?

Long story short, the number one rule is respect the contract. The number two rule is use common sense.

So, what’s cheating, what’s creepy to you? Please do share!

The post Is Marketing Automation Cheating or Just Slightly Creepy? appeared first on Spin Sucks.

Not only do I have to finish the book by August 1, now is the time the edits begin and we have to choose a subtitle.

You’d think the subtitle was the easy part. But you have to write it for search engines, which means it can’t always be catchy. I think we went through 200 or more subtitles before everyone agreed on the following five.

We’re taking a page from Tim Ferriss and doing some Google AdWords campaigns on each of the five, which leads a visitor to a landing page. There they can reserve a copy of the book when it comes out in November.

Vote for the Spin Sucks Subtitle

But what fun is it to only ask strangers what they think when we have such a great community here?

I also wanted to test list.ly so now we are killing two birds with one stone.

All you have to do is vote on your favorite one. If you have a comment (or eight), you can leave it right next to your vote.

Have a Better Idea?

If you have a subtitle idea you think is better than any of these eight, don’t be shy about leaving it in a comment.

We have been through so many, we’ll welcome any new ideas. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have such a great idea, it’ll be used.

If that’s the case, I’ll send you a signed copy of the book when it’s out late this year.

Don’t feel pressured, though, to come up with something new. There will be plenty of opportunities in the next few months to get yourself a signed copy.

Thanks for your help!

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