Brand Advocacy: Why Your Fans Are Important to Your Brand.
How can you turn your biggest fans into your word of mouth marketing army and how will it result in driving sales to your front door? Recently I just presented at I-Strategy in San Francisco on this topic. Which to my surprise “Brand Advocacy” was the buzz in many presentations from Brian Solis to Sandy Carter from IBM. More and more companies are realizing that cultivating the relationship between consumers and their brands is important for not only driving sales but creating a online community powerhouse.
As some of you might know my whole journey into social media began accidentally with becoming a online brand advocate for Bruce’s Yams in 2008, which then turned into a community manager position. Then recently with my twitter chatter for the international car brand Audi, turned into a great brand/consumer relationship and the Audi Roadtrip and a recent VIP invite to The Rolex 24 in Daytona, not to mention the marketing agency for Audi M80 actually stopping by my presentation to answer some further questions… how freakin cool is that?
In my presentation at I-Strategy, I taught about the importance of participating in conversations, interacting with consumers and how to empower your brand’s audience. If you missed the presentation here is a few key points I touched upon….
As some of you might already know I just overcame one of the biggest personal roadblocks recently. That’s right folks, I just obtained my driver’s license after a very long struggle with on the road anxiety after being involved in a car accident when I was young. I know, not as exciting as the rumors of my non driving due to Interpol taking away my license after an “incident”. I have ironically always loved cars, my dad being a car collector and I admit I cried during James Bond when he crashed the Aston Martin. Seriously…
In the ten years of not having a car… I took my time, saved a hell of a lot of money and had one heck of a supportive community of friends that would offer rides when needed. It hasn’t been easy at all but I gotta say that if I actually wasn’t stuck in an apartment or a house due to not having a car, I probably wouldn’t have started this blog or be doing what I am doing today.
If there was any automobile that would embody the essence of what “Miss Destructo” is, it would have to be an Audi…. In a week i’ll be going to the social media/blogger mecca Blogworld in Los Angeles. Being it’s my first time to Los Angeles I had to let the city know I was coming in style. I knew it was a long shot to ask, but I couldn’t think of a better way then to cruise in from Las Vegas in an Audi. So I shot a tweet over to @audi and guess what…. they said yes.
Last week I attended the amazing Radical Planet Unconference in Toronto, Canada…. It was two days of non-stop action packed Human Resources and Recruiting discussions. I loved the “unconference” vibe where we would all gather around in a circle and openly discuss scheduled topics rather than be spoken to. During these two days I not only participated in many of the fast paced discussions but learned tons of juicy info about the recruiting industry and how they are struggling to become more involved with social media for finding talent. As many of you local Tampa folks might of heard Nate Brown from K-Force talk about last week at Tampa’s own Barcamp 2011 on the same topic, of “Recruiting 2.0″ talent searching is becoming symbiotic with the use of social media tools.
Here’s some of my key takeaways from Radical Planet 2011. Huge thanks to Geoff Webb and all that were involved in making this event happen.
Recently I have been immersed in the world of Human Resources and Recruiting while speaking at HR conferences such as Talent Net Live and Radical Planet on the topic of Location Based Services (LBS) after my involvement in Foursquare Day and working for the new LBS mobile app Social Mesh. This was a topic that I didn’t expect would be such an important tool for the recruiting community, in my experience in talking with recruiters and business owners alike I have learned many things on the surprisingly symbiotic relationship between talent hunting and LBS tools such as Foursquare. I use Foursquare almost daily, but never realized the power of finding employees or talented people in my community until I started working with businesses daily with Head of Lettuce Media. In most of our coaching sessions we run into many concerns from employees and company owners on how they can use LBS to boost their employees efforts and make the office more prominent in their community or industry by using these tools.
Introduction to Foursquare/LBS
“Foursquare is a location-based social networking website based on hardware for mobile devices. The service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices such as smartphones. Users “check-in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges”.” (From Wikipedia.com)
I recently came across the tweets and blog of fellow Tampa twitterer @In11Months, and needless to say I saw a lot of myself someone who’s bio read “see how I will successfully use Social Media to achieve some major life goals.”, last year I went through a bit of a quarter life crisis. I still didn’t have a job, my fiancee and I split up, I was trying to run a consulting business by myself, living somewhere I didn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle, taking care of my very ill father and having my family turn against me while I nearly had a breakdown was one of the roughest times in my life. I vouched then I would pick myself up and never look back… well, it’s still been a bit of a rocky road, it’s like running through mud… it’s tough, tries to pull you down but there’s always dry land on the other side. I feel like I am finally at the light at the end of the tunnel.. business is picking up, i’ve got a packed traveling schedule, a possible book on the way, taking better care of my health and I am slowly learning to build up my confidence and trust people again after a rough few months. Most of all, I am learning to love myself and feel inspired… I found some great inspiration in this recent blog post by @In11Months that really hit home, he stated his frustration with his current state, albeit comfortable is wanting much much more out of life.
“A time flexible job, making decent money doing something I love to do! Is it really that hard??? Why is this so seemingly challenging to create for myself.”
Can we really create a different life for ourselves in less than a year through social media? You bet your bippy you can… here’s what I had to respond. Read more
This past week I attended the Sunscreen Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Florida… I was honored to be asked to attend, however being in social media I was feeling a little out of my element… curious to see where I could make connections with filmmakers and actors other than the obligatory comments of “Are you a model?” or the sleazy “Would you like to be in my movie” followed by awkward winking and pointing gestures. I actually ended up in many in depth conversations of low budget productions and/or struggling actors that have a severe gap in the promotion of themselves and/or movies especially online through social networks.
The lightbulb went off after talking about my personal branding, the Miss Destructo myth.. the breaking of the windows, my story, blurring that line between what is real and what is fiction..Just like creating a character on the screen, it’s all about the creation of myth and the art of seduction through many forms of media. While keeping the storyline consistent and wanting your audience on their toes waiting to know the next bit of the story, giving them a escape into an another world. Now, what if their online promotion tied in the storyline of the movie, through the website, promotional items, the actors promoting themselves as their characters with a unique character voice. This building of a multimedia, multi-platform, viral marketing powerhouse is called Transmedia.
Last year, some of you might remember the hashtag phenomenon I started on twitter #FakeSXSW, where we who could not attend made up fake events going on at the actual SXSW. I never thought I would actually make it to the actual event. A few weeks ago I visited the SXSW (South By South West) conference is an annual conference in Austin, Texas. If you are a tech nerd or a musician, you know as this as the behemoth mecca of all that is good and holy… aka the internet has exploded and god save our Lone Star beer ridden souls. I was blessed with the opportunity by the fabulous red haired wonder that is @EdRabbit to speak on the “How Not To Be A Douchebag” panel on how to efficiently network at SXSW without being “that guy”, we had a packed room and tons of great feedback on the panel. Only a few douchebags but they were atomized immediately after the panel by the mix of self-implosion and Axe deodorant.
Hey there! I know it’s been awhile… I’ve been busy with my social media agency Head Of Lettuce Media and all kinds of amazing new developments at Destructo HQ. I just thought I would give you all a little insight on what’s been going on in the world of Destructo the past few months and what’s in store for the next few months.
Attending Social Fresh in Tampa tomorrow, just a year ago I was still new to the whole business of social media and was still evolving into what I am doing today, I wouldn’t have imagined i’d be running my own social media company and that and in just a few weeks i’ll be accomplishing one of my ultimate goals speaking at South By Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.
Come check out my panel at SXSW called “How Not To Be A Douchebag at SXSW“ where we will teach networking skills and how not to be “that guy/or girl” at SXSW.
Copyright 2011- Miss Destructo
