Can we please have 5 more minutes, why was her life taken so soon? I have asked myself these questions and many more maybe a million times since June 6th 2017. That is the day that I lost my Wife, the mother of my children, and quite honestly my best friend. Back in December of 2015 when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer the doctors told us that it was very unlikely that she would go into remission and we knew this day would come, but as I have learned/screamed/cried […]
September 26, 2016 in Community
No not real snow ( at least not yet ), but I’ll get to what that means in just a bit. As anyone in their jobs I like to have sense of accomplishment and believe that I am making a difference for the company that I work for and my team. Until recently I felt like that was the case, but soon realized that wasn’t the case any longer. Over the past year and a half I have had the privilege to work with and meet some really awesome people […]
June 15, 2016 in Community, Social Media
The LiNC conference is an annual conference held by Lithium Technologies which is the platform for the Brocade community. This conference provides a place where you can meet and hear from some of the top brands in our industry and see how they are leveraging the community to move their business forward. Community Manger Certification II This year in addition to the conference this year I decided to take the Community Manager Certification class. The Community Manager Certification II focuses on four areas: Growing community membership and participation Developing […]
May 2, 2016 in Community, Social Media
Image credit: Brandwatch Let’s face it almost every company out there has some sort of social listening program. It doesn’t matter if you are a tech company or in the food industry, you care what your customers and competitors are saying. The great thing is that there are a number of excellent services out there that will let you search for those conversations. The not so great thing is that a lot of companies are not doing the best job at listening. It’s been said over and over that these […]
November 12, 2015 in Community, Social Media
(source) Let the community work for you instead. The most undervalued and ignored part of most companies is the community. At this point in time every CMO “gets” that we need a community but aren’t really sure where it fits, what resources it should have, and what purpose it serves. It’s like companies are launching communities just because other companies launch communities. When you do this you are just setting it up for failure and wasting your staff’s time as well as the customers that may come in to offer […]
August 20, 2015 in Influencer Marketing, Non-Tech, Social Media
You can call it whatever you want: influencer relations, influencer marketing, evangelist, advocate, thought-leader, social/community manager, technical marketing engineer, etc. If the goal of your job is to educate non-customers in hopes that they will become customers, you’re marketing to them. Every time you ask someone with one of these titles what their role is I bet the answer either starts with or ends with “but I’m not marketing”. Why!? Marketing isn’t the problem, in fact if it wasn’t for marketing we probably wouldn’t have jobs. Why would customers even […]
August 17, 2015 in Social Media
Which platform is right, what is the next twitter…..what is the next big thing that will help companies connect with their customers? It seems every business is asking themselves these questions when it comes to connecting with customers. However, the problem is the question they are asking. They should be focused on what the customer wants and not so much on the next platform they can use to sell to you. There are many ways in which companies try to communicate with customers or potential customers. I will go over a few in […]
August 14, 2015 in Non-Tech, Social Media
This seems to be the state of mind with most companies regarding their current customers. I am the only one that see this? It seems like every marketing campaign is to get new customers by offering huge discounts, free products, and other incentives that are very rarely offered to existing customers. That type of customer service is why customer loyalty is almost non-existent. Common sense makes me think that current customers would be more loyal and maybe even purchase additional products/services if these same discounts were offered to them. For example, […]
March 23, 2015 in Non-Tech, Social Media
I have had a great time as the Principal Engagement Manager focused on the EMC Elect. In the past 6 months I have had the chance to go to a few more events than normal and that gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of new and awesome people in the Elect program, the tech community, and within EMC. We have had great conversations and hope to continue to grow those friendships. I have been mainly focused on the influencer marketing side of things (Elect). I have thoroughly enjoyed […]
March 17, 2015 in Non-Tech, Social Media
Simply put; communities exists so that people can share unique experiences or to solve common problems. However in today’s social world there a lot of faster and more convenient ways of getting an answer to your question…..right? Why would anyone take the extra step to join a community? How does an online community fit in with the goals of the business? From a consumer point of view communities allow me to find answers or post questions about specific issues I am having with a product and they also allow me […]
