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Assumptions are vital. Despite the whole “when you assume you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me,’” maxim, assumptions can be valuable and speed analysis, decision making, and implementation.

But when evaluating what assumptions are being made, however, it’s vital to look at your own assumptions as skeptically as you view those of others.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Brand Identity and Logo Design

During a presentation on new brand identity and logo design work recently, the brand manager was, obviously, very involved in creating the new brand identity. Before unveiling the new brand identity recommendation, however, he reviewed the organization’s current, but long-ago designed, logo. While the old logo is familiar through repetition, the presenter highlighted two subtle logo elements that were a surprise to me. Although obvious after the fact, I’d never noticed one of the logo elements previously, and the other I had MAYBE noticed “subconsciously.”

When pointing out these two design elements, the brand manager mocked them because they are, especially to those unfamiliar with the organization, obscure. Although the two elements depicted in the logo are publically associated with his organization, the graphic representation is too subtle for the uninitiated (i.e., POTENTIAL customers). Because of that, he rightly identified the old logo as not working hard enough for most of the intended audience.

Then, after a little fanfare, he unveiled his organization’s new brand identity work.

The new logo makes the organization instantly recognizable. But (in my strategic view), the new logo is unnecessarily cluttered and has a retro feel clearly off strategy for an organization trying to promote its forward-looking perspective.

The brand manager addressed one graphic element that seemed particularly out of date: it’s an exact match of a visual element on display throughout the organization’s headquarters location.

Yes, it’s all over THE INSIDE of its headquarters.

Since the brand manager works INSIDE headquarters, this antiquated visual element made perfect sense to him. To most audience members (who NEVER see the headquarters), however, it screams “antique,” which is equivalent to “off brand.”

Interestingly though, THAT assumption made all the sense in the world to the brand manager even though it’s an even more gross oversight than the assumptions he’d been skewering just a few moments before about the old logo.

What Assumptions Are You Making about Your Brand Identity and Logo Design?

Yup, we love our own assumptions, and often think others’ assumptions are just plain stupid.

My advice: find someone who doesn’t know what you know. Ask this person what assumptions you’re making and if any of them are just plain stupid. Once you’ve had someone do that, see how strong your idea still is. You’ll be better off for doing this . . . trust me. - Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I wrote an article for an upcoming issues of The Social Media Monthly magazine about how high visibility tragedies are affecting brands’ social media strategies. While much is written about what a brand should do DURING a tragedy, The Social Media Monthly article focuses on what brands can do before the next tragedy, and includes interviews with social media luminaries Jim Joseph and Lisa Grimm.

Social Media Moments of Silence

One norm developing relative to tragedies and social media management for brands is the “social media moment of silence.” This phrase reflects an expectation that for certain tragedies, some or all brands are expected to curb or completely halt social media sharing out of respect for victims of tragedy.

Something I didn’t cover in the article was our exploration on what defines a tragedy warranting a social media moment of silence.

Both Jim Joseph and Lisa Grimm acknowledged there are no hard and fast rules for which tragedies necessitate a social media shutdown. Yet reviewing 2012 and 2013, the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, CT and the Boston Marathon bombing represented the tragedies where expectations were greatest for shutting down social media sharing for brands…and others.

5 Areas to Monitor for Social Media Moments of Silence

In the absence of fully-defined norms, here are five areas to consider before and during the next tragedy to help shape your brand’s social media sharing:

The Tragedy’s Geography – Social media moments of silence seem confined to First World tragedies, and more specifically, those taking place between Washington, DC and Boston. Much of the news media is concentrated in this corridor, and events here receive more attention than shootings, weather, explosions, and disasters elsewhere.

The Volume of Immediate News Coverage – Use CNN as your gauge for how much attention a tragedy is broadly getting. The more continuous coverage a tragedy receives, along with a high degree of immediate live coverage, raises expectations for a social media moment of silence. Greater uncertainty in determining the extent of a tragedy can also argue for keeping silent – in case the tragedy suddenly gets much worse.

The Familiarity of the Story Surrounding the Tragedy – The easier it is for the members of the general public to place themselves within the story, the more likely a moment of silence is expected. It was clearly easier for the public to see themselves with kids at a school or at a major public event in a major city than to be located in a small rural town with a major explosion.

The Types of Victims Involved in the Tragedy – The larger the number of victims, the younger the victims, and victims felled by human-on-human violence all drive higher expectations to shut up your social media voice.

The Tragedy’s Current Status – A lack of closure seems a major factor affecting how long a social media moment of silence is expected to last. The longer the period of uncertainty (whether that’s if the tragedy is over or the time to understand the reasons), the greater the likelihood the moment of silence needs to extend for a longer period of time.

What do you think about social media moments of silence?

As we said at the start, the norms aren’t all formed on how to approach a social media moment of silence. What do you think of this list? Are there other criteria you would add?

We’ll be monitoring these five criteria (and others that emerge) going forward toward solidifying stronger strategic guidelines for modifying brands’ social media behaviors during various types of tragedies. - Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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The headlines are filled with stories about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI tapping information directly from social media and Internet company servers through the PRISM program. There are clearly many people talking about the NSA social media story with a lot to say about it.

All I’ll offer is an admonition I try to apply personally:  Live your life – including your life on social media – as if it’s all open for viewing by someone you may never expect is paying attention to what you are saying and doing. As further clarification, there’s a Bible verse about everything hidden coming to light. That’s pretty much the strategy I struggle with and strive to carry out!

Online Vigilante Behavior

While the NSA story is sobering, egregious uses of online information happen on a much smaller and potentially more immediately damaging level, too. Just think about the examples you see of self-appointed online vigilantes who shine an accusatory light on whatever and whoever offends them – with no oversight at all.

The most recent example I saw appeared on Facebook this weekend. It was re-shared, of course, by an online vigilante who prompted an earlier Brainzooming post on the topic. This particular share, however, wasn’t about online behavior.

The Stranger on the Train

This online vigilante story started with someone snapping a photo of a stranger on a train traveling from Philadelphia. With no corroboration, no proof, and no particular explanation of her own motives (other than personal frustration and indignation), the woman taking photo shared it on Facebook along with a status update alleging the guy and his buddies talked for two hours about having extramarital affairs their wives had never discovered.

The person sharing the picture originally asked others to re-share the guy on the train’s photo hoping it would reach the Facebook wall of his wife or someone who knows him so his wife finds out about it.

Using Social Media to Punish Strangers

Wow!

This is a scary story: one stranger, with no accountability to anyone or expectations of disclosure, reported a story about another stranger, with a serious accusation that no one can effectively corroborate.

And not only that, the person’s request that the photo be shared resulted in more than 276,000 shares in the first week since it was placed on Facebook.

This is an example that can potentially upend multiple peoples’ lives – all done without a second thought or ANY oversight.

Maybe the guy is a complete louse. Maybe he’s completely innocent. But when a random train rider who fancies him or herself an online vigilante can decide another person’s guilt and attempt to impose a self-determined punishment because it feels right to that individual? That’s a scary society!  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Luke Sullivan, a copywriter, creative director (Fallon McElligott and The Martin Agency), and author of “Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads” (affiliate link), spoke about the critical importance of cultural tension to creative ideas at AAFKC.

Ironically, for a presentation all about creative ideas coming from drama, tension, and conflict, Luke Sullivan’s presentation (which he guaranteed wouldn’t suck) was titled, “Leveraging Cultural Tension to Improve Creativity.

Leveraging?

How much more boring, uncreative, and corporate jargony can you get? I tweeted beforehand that “Leveraging” should have been replaced with “Kicking the MF Ass of.” With Luke Sullivan’s in-your-face presentation style, that definitely would have been a better title.

Consider this post one big paraquote, i.e. it’s pulled from live tweets and pictures during the Luke Sullivan talk with some additional words to string them all together. That’s a paraquote post!

Creative Ideas, Drama, and Conflict

We are all interested in conflict. It’s human nature to be intrigued by conflicts, problems, and drama. When everything is okay, we’re not interested. If you want people to be interested in your advertising, you have to find the tension.

All drama is conflict. Everybody needs an enemy. Think about how much Star Wars would have sucked with just Luke.

Bad ass guys are interesting, and they make for a rocking story (Think Mayhem – although Mayhem may be more creatively than financially successful for Allstate). Everybody wants to be the bad guy. Don’t believe it? Kids go out for Halloween dressed as Michael Myers. Nobody dresses up like Jamie Lee Curtis for Halloween!

Figure out who is the enemy for your brand? Who the hell does your brand want to slap the crap out of?

Problems, Tension, and Creativity

Creativity happens in response to a problem. When it comes to advertising, finding the tension to spark creative can come from a variety of places: your brand vs. the other brand, cultural issues (i.e., we celebrate thin people as ideal but we also love crappy, fattening food), contrasting ideologies and themes, unseemly things in a product category.

If you bake tension into your creative strategy, you set the stage for ongoing story building. It’s imperative you address the tension, truth, and emotion of the situation authentically, though.

Negatives and Anticipation Get Attention

Problems are interesting. Solutions are boring. “Got milk?” works, but a campaign about “Have milk!” wouldn’t go anywhere. What’s interesting is what’s ABOUT to happen in your advertising. Negatives work. That’s why advertising people can be seen as so negative . . . because negative works!

Finding Tension for Creative Ideas

Where do you look for tension when you’re trying to create attention for a product or category that doesn’t have tension? You MAKE UP the tension!

Steps 1 and 2 in finding tension:

Also, look toward conflict. Want to find great sources of conflict ideas? Look back at “The Far Side” cartoons (affiliate link), since all of the Far Side revolved around conflict.

Translating Uncomfortable Tension into great Advertising

Great strategic creative briefs build in conflict. A bad strategic creative brief doesn’t tell you anything new. And if there’s nothing new, it’s simply a boring old rerun. If the creative winds up being bad, everyone in the room who has touched it is to blame. A big reason for bad creative is because a decision was made to throw everything into the advertising. Saying, “We got it all in there,” should always be uttered with a deep sense of shame.

Parting Shots from Luke Sullivan

True communication is what your listener takes away. And, the simpler something is, the less it ages. – Mike Brown

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Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact TheBrainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

(Affiliate Links)

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Today, we have a second installment in our Brainzooming series on strategic thinking questions inspired by the Fast Company list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2013.

Today’s strategic thinking questions focus on creativity, social media, and content marketing.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, these strategic thinking questions don’t appear in the Fast Company most creative people in business profiles. They were created by reviewing the profiles and asking ourselves what questions those profile may have asked themselves while working on their creative achievements.

The reason we’re emphatic this is because of what happened with Fast Company after publishing our post covering the 2012 list. We noticed late one morning the main Fast Company account shared our tweet about the blog post. Noting the hundreds of thousands of followers they have, I quickly inserted a Brainzooming ad in the post, and waited for the blog traffic explosion. Then, as a double check, I went to the Fast Company RT to see what it would be like to wind up at our blog from a Fast Company link.

Guess what?

Fast Company swapped out our link to Brainzooming in my original tweet, substituting one to the list on its website. If we’d ripped off their copy, I would completely understand. But our content is unique AND featured more than 100 links to the magazine’s website. That’s a social media foul, in my book, but what are you going to do?

Here are today’s UNIQUE strategic thinking questions. You can click to get to the underlying profiles, but don’t expect to find these creativity, social media, and content marketing questions there!

Creativity, Content Marketing, and Social Media Questions Inspired by the Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business 2013

Creativity Questions

How many scary and risky things do you say “Yes” to in the course of a year? How many do you say “No” to? What’s the impact of your answers on your creative output? (13. Connie Britton - ACTRESS, NASHVILLE)

What are new ways to expand your global influences without having to leave your office? (2. Dong-Hoon Chang - EVP, HEAD OF DESIGN STRATEGY, SAMSUNG)

What’s the longest your organization has ever brainstormed, and are you ready to brainstorm 10x longer at one stretch? (27. Maria Mujica - LATIN AMERICAN MARKETING DIRECTOR, GUMS AND CANDY, MONDELĒZ INTERNATIONAL)

How can you deliberately create more white space to experiment, try stuff, learn, change, and do it better? (32.Hosain Rahman - FOUNDER, CEO, JAWBONE)

Why would it be interesting to hear you vent about what’s gone wrong or has failed in your life? (34. Marc Maron - COMEDIAN, WTF WITH MARC MARON)

If you were required to triple the number of new creative ideas you generate on any given day, what would you do differently to boost your creative output? (37. Darrin Crescenzi - SENIOR DESIGNER, PROPHET)

What creative residue do you leave yourself at the end of the day to fuel a quick creative start tomorrow? (47. Simon Rich – WRITER)

How can you grow the number of self-described “creatives” you talk to weekly to boost your new ideas? (6. Max Levchin - CEO, AFFIRM; BOARD MEMBER, YAHOO)

How would it change your creative perspective if, as a TV show’s creator is called a “showrunner,” your title were whatever you produce + “runner”? (77-83. TV’S Head of the Class – A GROUP OF SIX TV SHOW CREATORS)

If you typically have a plan in place for your creativity, how would just starting and seeing what happens feel more refreshing and creative? (77-83. TV’S Head of the Class – A GROUP OF SIX TV SHOW CREATORS)

How can you bring together young, experienced people and older, inexperienced people to reverse the typical learning environment of the older teaching the young? (84. Michelle Rowley - FOUNDER, CODE SCOUTS)

What happens when you flip your typical creative process around completely? (90. Pendleton Ward – ANIMATOR)

What’s stopping you from asking for favors and help from people you have no business trying to talk to? (96. Ruzwana Bashir - COFOUNDER, CEO, PEEK)

Lots of risk can thwart addressing lots of societal need, unless someone is bold enough to do something – how bold are you? (98. Wendell Pierce - COFOUNDER, STERLING FARMS FRESH FOODS)

Content Marketing and Social Media Questions

How can you collect and share more real-life stories of people your company has helped in meaningful, personal ways? (10. Scott Harrison - FOUNDER, CHARITY: WATER)

What would happen if you tried to come up with and select a year’s worth of content marketing ideas before you published your first piece of content? (18. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele - COCREATORS AND STARS, KEY & PEELE)

If you covered only one topic, how would the narrow topic free you for incredible diversity in how you deliver content on the topic? (20. Lara Setrakian- FOUNDER, SYRIA DEEPLY)

What are all the ways you are and aren’t making it easy for your fans to create and share content about their experiences with your brand? (40. Kate Phelan and Justin Cooke - CREATIVE DIRECTOR, TOPSHOP; CMO, TOPSHOP)

How are you getting ready to have your brand catch and do something with the content your audience throws back at you? (21. Jaime Robinson - VP, EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR, PEREIRA & O’DELL)

If you’re giving new content away, what and when will you get paid for it? (28. Diplo - DJ, FOUNDER, MAD DECENT)

What are new ways to serve up your best content and not just your most recent content to readers? (45. Kate Lee - DIRECTOR OF CONTENT, MEDIUM)

What will it take for your brand to process external inputs and do / say something about them in real-time via social media? (7. Jill Applebaum and Megan Sheehan - CREATIVE DIRECTOR, JWT; ART DIRECTOR AND DESIGNER)

Would a prank via social media potentially help draw attention to a cause you care about deeply? (76. Rebecca Nagle and Hannah Brancato - FEMINIST ACTIVISTS)

When it comes to content, what more could you do with your content to create attention for your brand or another brand that needs attention? (88. Sscott Borchetta - CEO, BIG MACHINE RECORDS)

How can you create a place for smart, opinionated, and even snarky customers to hang out and share their knowledge about what they love (which might not be your brand)? (91. Mahbod Moghadam - COFOUNDER, RAP GENIUS)

What will it take to create as clear a group of dissenters for your content as you have created fans? (92. Leandra Medine - FOUNDER, MANREPELLER.COM)

If you provided 3 weeks of training to the content creators in your organization, how would you best use the time? (97. Stephanie Horbaczewski - PRESIDENT, CEO, STYLEHAUL) 

Mike Brown

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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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We’re big believers in strong connections between strategy and creative work. It’s been a topic on the blog, and it’s a key component of the strategic thinking workshops I conduct.

Strategy and Creative Work Passing in the Daylight

I was talking recently with someone involved on a team creating a response for a customer inquiry. For various reasons, team members building the strategy for the response worked separately from those addressing the creative elements. Since the strategy people and the creative people were working one after the other, instead of together, a variety of late in the process issues developed.

As the person sharing the story related it, some issues were addressed successfully, many were addressed in a compromised fashion, and some were never addressed in an integrated way.

Eeeek!

5 Reasons Strategy and Creative Work Must Be Integrated

Listening to this person’s frustration prompts these five reasons it’s vital for strategy and creative work to be integrated. In this example, all five reasons contributed to falling short in creating an optimal response.

When a strategy and creative team are working together . . .

1. The creative team can do initial design with an integrated view of the end product

Without knowing key decisions the strategy team was making over the course of a week, the creative team sat idle awaiting input. By the time creative team members received the nearly final content, team members were behind the gun to get the creative design turned around with adequate review time to meet the deadline.

2. It allows the strategy team to efficiently deliver direction and content

The strategy team didn’t understand the final format the creative team was creating. As a result, they threw “stuff” over the wall to the creative team in ways that made sense from a strategic standpoint. What was convenient for the strategy team wasn’t optimal for the creative team, unfortunately, since the divided team didn’t talk throughout the development process.

3. Clarifying questions from the creative team can be placed in context

As the work moved into creative development, the creative team asked for more input from the strategy team. Because strategy team members lacked a frame of reference, they viewed the request as too encompassing for the time available. The result was the strategy team passed on sharing additional information. After the fact, strategy team members discovered they had over-estimated what the creative team was asking for in the request, creating a gap that went unaddressed.

4. It keeps creative team members from guessing when needing to fill last minute blanks

No matter how well a process is planned and managed, there will be last minute details and gaps to be filled. In this case, because the strategy and creative teams were disconnected, the creative team wound up filling last minute blanks without sufficient input. Some blanks were filled appropriately; others weren’t.

5. The creative team won’t leave out important things because they don’t fit the design

The strategy team had made decisions about the customer response’s positioning and compelling support points to reinforce the recommendation. Lacking visibility to the decisions or a strategic understanding why it received some of the content, the creative team varied the positioning and left out significant detail behind the support points. Why? The content didn’t fit the design and creative direction developed in isolation.

Sounds like a cluster? That’s why strategy and creative efforts need to be integrated.

As a former associate used to say, “This wasn’t open heart surgery. No one died.”

That’s certainly true in this case, but the disconnect between the strategy and creative teams created a needlessly under-optimized business result. That’s just one reason why when we’re conducting a live strategy, business performance, or innovation workshop for a client, we push for having both strategic and creative team members included.

You can’t have one or the other group represented and expect the most successful result.

Are you with us on how imperative it is to connect strategy and creative work? What do you do to make sure it happens as successfully as possible? – Mike Brown

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Learn all about Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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If you follow the @Brainzooming account on Twitter when I’m live tweeting a luncheon with someone incredibly tweetable, don’t be surprised to be inundated with forty or fifty tweets (sorry!).

That’s exactly what happened when Alex Knapp, Social Media Editor and staff writer at Forbes, headlined this month’s Social Media Club of Kansas City lunch talking about the intersection of publishing and social media strategy.

For those who don’t follow @Brainzooming on Twitter, here via reformatted tweets and paraquotes, are just a few of the social media strategy insights Alex Knapp shared.

Mistakes Publishers (and others) Make with Social Media Strategy

According to Knapp, the biggest mistake publishers make is thinking there is something new in social media. Publishing changes based on the platform, and the only thing that changes over time is the type of content you put on each one. The challenge (and opportunity) with social media is that it is communicating, engagement, and marketing all at once.

Social Media Talents

Social media requires multiple abilities from someone in a short time in a small space. Many publishers (and other types of companies) make the mistake of picking people with only one talent who then struggle. Among the many skills needed to be great at social media, headline writing is THE social media skill.

Alex Knapp proposed a thought experiment: You have two people, one of whom you can hire to do social media for a publication. Do you pick someone who is early in a business career and all over Twitter or someone more senior with lots of work experience and no clue about Twitter? Knapp advises picking the more experienced person since it’s possible to train someone on Twitter in an hour. Training someone who understands social media to write well, think better, and market more effectively? Well, that takes considerably longer than an hour.

Not Every Social Network Should Have identical Same Content

When it comes to taking the best advantage of varied content across channels, Knapp pointed out a great example from the world of publishing to illustrate his point: The New York Times wouldn’t run an arts story on the sports page unless it had a very specific sports angle. Given that, why would an organization run the exact same story at the exact same time on very different social media platforms?

Similar to how we covered Mall of America featuring different content by social network, Knapp shared that at Forbes, Google+ is for tech news, LinkedIn is for startup news, and there are twelve different topic-oriented Twitter feeds, some of which have come and gone over time based on what’s working. Ultimately the goal for each platform (which may have much larger readership than a publication’s paid subscriber base) shapes how a brand approaches it.

When faced with too many social media options and not enough time to go around, Knapp recommends to start where a brand has its biggest audience and focus there. He also advises against the common idea of not putting resources toward social media because it’s free. He asked why a brand WOULDN’T want to put resources toward something that was free and worked vs. paying money for marketing efforts that cost a lot and are difficult to track.

Social Media Strategy Fundamentals

• Social media is the industrialization of word of mouth, so it’s vital to make sure social content is easily shared.
• If you have great content that’s working, run it again, adding variety to how you feature it. He suggested pulling out a quote (because people love quotes), trying an alternative headline, or featuring a specific item from a longer list.
• Invite and reward engagement with personalities, content, and readers themselves (i.e., readers whose content and comments are featured will turn around and share it with others). It’s vital to show you are listening to social media exchanges and are able to engage your audience.
• Data from multiple sources helps determine the effectiveness of social media efforts. Social data sources may disagree, so you have to compare and contrast them. Knapp points out that Google Analytics doesn’t provide accurate information on Facebook traffic.
• Run analyses as often as possible (or as makes sense), measuring to the extent the results will drive change in what you are doing. While you’re measuring, look beyond the top clicks and shares. If you avoid going deeper or looking at alternative views, you’ll miss other valuable insights.
• Don’t get caught up in your own preferences. If readers love something you do, even if you hate it, keep doing it anyway.

Social Media at Forbes

There is a 3-person core social media team at Forbes. Their efforts are complemented by many, many freelance bloggers who are paid (very well according to Alex) based on the hits on their blog posts. (Hey, Alex, where do I apply?)  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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