Social Media Archives

February 6, 2018 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

Fly Eagles? Fly Dogs! How Social Media Changed A Mascot

The Eagles WON the Super Bowl. Social Media is abuzz with burning questions regarding the team mascot: Is it a bird? Is it a German Shepherd? Or a is it a Belgian Malinois?

Ruger, a Belgian Malinois, pondering his resemblance to the Eagles Underdog

Some fans may have been puzzled that the Eagles, whose mascot, by the way IS an Eagle, were wearing dog masks. Most of the masks were a shepherd type dog with dark muzzle, but some creative types posted their masks of other breeds as their spirit moved them!

The CreepyParty German Shepherd Mask

The “underdogs” motif may not be officially Sanctioned, however they are proving popular with fans. What’s more fun than a graphic of a fierce dog/man who’s “gotta eat”, “gotta be trusted” or who can fly? Variations of the dog/bird/man can be found and purchased on street corners, on popular websites like Amazon, EBay and Etsy. Variants of the Eagles logo with a dog head are also popular.

Whether they are officially licensed or not (mostly not) the burning question in my mind is whether this dog tracks it’s lineage to the German Shepherd dog, a very popular and recognized breed, or whether it’s the Belgian Shepherd or Belgian Malinois, a breed that has gained popularity and favor with law enforcement and which has been glamorized recently in movies and television shows.

The official Eagles rendition does not even look like a German Shepherd OR a Malinois.

It’s easy to be confused or to mistake one for another. In fact, there are many crosses that are being touted as one or the other, but it takes an astute observer of the breed standard to discern which breed is predominant.

So I did a scientific analysis of the “underdog” mask. By scientific, I mean that I asked my friends who are dog breeders and have been involved with the breeds for many years what type of dog the mask represents. My Belgian Malinois friends all say the mask is a “really bad German Shepherd”. With this in mind, I asked my German Shepherd breeding friends, and their collective response was “We are not sure”.

So, considering that most people would not recognize a Belgian Malinois, and most would certainly recognize a German Shepherd or Shepherd Mix, I am going to concur with the masses, that this must be a German Shepherd.

Interesting side note, the mask, which was produced originally by a Chinese Company who had NO idea about the impending popularity, was sold out in one day on Amazon. All 230 of the CreepyParty “German Shepherd” masks were sold out in one morning. The owners of the company, Jason Lee had no idea what happened, and to his amazement, discovered that the sell out was due to the Eagles win over Atlanta in the playoffs, and two Eagles players, Lane Johnson and Chris Long, celebrated by donning the masks and embracing the role of “underdogs”. The rest was a social media firestorm, and adoption of the German Shepherd mask as a rallying cry to Eagles Fans everywhere.

So, don’t despair, Eagles fans… we are NOT losing an Eagle, we are gaining a German Shepherd as a mascot.

Congratulations #Eagles! #FlyDogs#Fly

April 20, 2016 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

Social Media Tips: Trust and Transparency

Trust. What does it take to create trust, and how can trust be taken away?

And for that matter, what is social media trust? And how does social media transparency help or hinder building trust and engagement in social media?

You may have heard the term “transparency” used in relation to business branding or identity marketing, but what does the concept of transparent marketing mean, and how can you be sure to establish trust with your clients, customers and prospects?

When you’ve lost trust, you can bet you’ve lost business.

Recently I’ve been receiving a series of emails, on a almost daily basis from my Internet service provider, that imply that my computer and network have been compromised. At first, I disregarded this as a sales attempt… After all, I am running hordes of security on my network, and the op sys I am using is touted as being fairly stable and resistant to virus infiltration.

But as I started to think about it, I realized that if this was a sales attempt, it is preying on a vulnerable market. So many people have computers today who did not grow up with them like Generation C is… To this older an newly connected generation, computers are still something of a mystery! Case in point, I recently got one of the new ipads for my mother who is 87. She absolutely loves the ipad interface and marvels at what the device can do,…. She’s unusual for her generation, howeve she is not as aware of hacker attacks or viruses as someone who is Generation C or even Gen Y.

So, the email about viruses made me angry.

I am sure this was not the result the company that sent it to me had hoped for. They more likely were anticipating that I’d be thankful for the heads up. But recently, I’ve had a malevolent person who has been stalking me, and in addition to my system potentially being hacked, I am now concerned that this individual may may have done something to my system when he had access to it.

But was my service provider preying on my insecurity? For a megalith company, that I respect, and who I have as a service provider to stoop to sending me false allegations that my Mac may have a bot or key logger really miffed me.

Question is – do I trust that the service provider is truly attempting to be helpful, or do i disregard and figure it’s an attempt to add additional service fees to my monthly invoice?

Trust. If I trusted the service provider, there would be no question. Like the Facebook trust experience, where multiple changes have disrupted or opened up our privacy settings, the Internet and social media marketing has elevated the attempts on the part of undesirable or poorly informed suppliers, especially those who are adept at positioning themselves as “experts”. They prey on our fears and use double talk to obfuscate their meaning, The plethora of these types has given rise to our questioning whether these are actually attempts to help versus attempts to sell. As it turns out, I did decide to have this third party evaluate what is going on with my systems…. They are immersed in my Mac as we speak and they’ve started to unravel things.

How much simpler things would have been for them, had they established a level of trust first. Then there would be no question that the first sign of trouble was real. As it was, this sale took 4 phone calls to 7 individuals including their security division before I “trusted” what they were telling me, that’s 7 people who were tied up taking to a prospect when really, and ideally, this should no have had to escalate to that level. If there is a lesson, it is to treat your brand and your customers with value, be truthful, and don’t think that a cleverly veiled sales approach will not be recognized as such by your prospects.

Certainly it’s important to aim at giving value, but it’s equally important to refrain from disguising your true intent. In this instance, had the service provider simply shared that there is a paid version and an unpaid version of support in a clear manner, I may have jumped inboard sooner. Have you had experiences where you were not sure whether the offer was genuine or a sales attempt? Do you have call to action offers that may cross the line, or have you experience one on a site you’ve visited?

April 19, 2016 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

Social Media Marketing And Your Online Brand

Social Media tools and your online brand

Your website is only a part of your online campaign for online branding. Granted,an optimized website is the most important component of your online marketing strategy, however even with the most glorious and well thought-out website, you may be missing huge opportunities to support your product, champion your brand and connect with your customers and prospects.

Social media marketing was a “buzzword” that we started to discuss a several years ago. You may also have heard the terminology “new marketing” or “online marketing” or even “inbound marketing”. The concept is to create an optimized online presence to help your customers find you and your business. A lot of the social media “guru’ types talked about “engagement” and there was much nodding of heads. But the reality is that there is very little engagement happening, even today, because so many companies have opted to run automated campaigns.

I’m not against all automation, but it just does not work for every organization in every situation. Especially in times of high national tension, when the focus is on an earthquake or superstorm, having an automated message about sunny skies is a real disconnect with your audience. The worst thing you can to is have your customers disengage, opt out, and disconnect. Now, those wonderful social channels have worked against you.

If I had to pick one word to describe the best practices for social media marketing, that word would be responsive. Not only are we striving for responsive design in websites, but we also should be responsive to our audience and to the societal and cultural changes around us. If you are responsive, you are creating content that is relevant and that has true appeal to your targeted customers.

A responsive website is one that fluidly re-conforms to the device it is being viewed on. Newer websites are being created that have this feature built in. Some of the older websites have both a desktop version and a mobile version. Without getting too technical, what you want to be sure to do is to present the version that is best viewed on the device that the viewer is using at the time they visit your site. It makes perfect sense, right?

One of my biggest frustrations is one of the news alert services that I use that sends me a link to an article that I want to read. When I click on the link, I’m taken to a general page that may or may not contain the article. Eventually, I stop clicking on the link and ignore the alert. I may even unsubscribe from the alert. This is no different than putting the wrong terminology or advertising or teaser to an article, then sending the reader to a site that is so general, they get turned off. Social media is an awesome tool to drive traffic to your site – just be sure that the link is truly the target of the tweet or Facebook post. Otherwise, you will lose customers.

When it comes to internet branding and social media optimization, the rules for marketing have changed, and without a social media presence, you will be a dinosaur. Customers are searching and researching using the Internet. There is an entire generation that is growing up in a world where using Google is second nature to find answers. The changes that search engines have gone through are taken in stride, and adopted readily. To be sure that your online brand is being appropriately represented in today’s informational society means you have to be relevent and you have to be present. That includes social media. The old excuse that your customers don’t use social media is becoming tired and inaccurate. Your customers use social media, and they use it every day. They may be checking their email first thing in the morning, which includes their Facebook statuses and their friend’s updates. The way we communicate is much more fluid, more rapid and most likely, online.

Be aware of derogatory messages about your brand and be responsive. Don’t hide from critical reviews, but address them with equally positive reviews from your customers.

Social media marketing, is first social, second media, and third marketing. Keeping this in perspective will go a long way to your successful online branding and internet marketing campaign.

April 18, 2016 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

3 Social Media Mistakes To Kill Your LinkedIn Credibility

Social Media can make you rich! If you had a dollar for every mistake that someone made using social media, you’d be a very wealthy person! In the meantime, the catalyst for this post was an email that I received from someone I am not well acquainted with, but who asked to connect with me on Linkedin.

The letter began with, “Im sorry to bother you but…”

For the record, I really like Linked In. It’s a resume online and also a living Rolodex (yes, I am dating myself), but the cool thing is that it enables me to keep up with my professional network despite years and distance and career hops and leaps and changes. I love the fact that each person updates their contact information so I can congratulate them on the promotions, or encourage them through the changes. It’s remarkable because it’s a tool for business relationships, unlike Facebook or Google+ or Twitter or Instagram. In this respect, Linkedin is unique and I love that about this interface.

1.LinkedIn is a BUSINESS Social network platform

So, my first gripe with new users is a big mistake of not understanding the nature of Linked-in as a business platform. It’s fine to connect with friends and expand your relationship to include business. What is not fine is to undermine your professional account with a casual, non-business profile photo. That means the picture of your beautiful dog or amazing cat will not do – unless you want to give the impression of being less than credible. Also, the photo of you swinging a bat at the company softball game, not a good choice. You should pic a photo of you playing baseball if you are a pro baseball player, otherwise, it’s not the right image to project. Leave the sweatshirts, tank tops, cocktail hour, family vacation shots on Facebook – this is not the place for them.

2. Don’t spam the Linked in Connections

My second gripe – ok, so we are connected. Now is your chance! Develop a social media relationship, right? Send an email, get to know each other… or wait, try to sell me something? What? I don’t really know you, I connected because perhaps we met at an event and had a nice conversation… the reality is that you don’t know me, don’t know my company and you are sending me the same template email you sent to everyone else. Do you really think I am going to jump out of my seat now that I got your email and pick up the phone to buy what you are selling? I don’t think so. In fact, most sales take place after you have developed a relationship. Social media is “social” for a reason – to use it as a device to create more emails to send out letter to is a disservice to you, your organization and it’s disrespectful of the connection. If you use Linked in to attempt to sell to me, you risk being disconnected. If I like you, I may reach out to you first, to try to explain why what you did was a bad idea… if that doesn’t work, will disconnect. Part of the power of linkedin is the ability to potentially connect with the connections of the person you are connected to. Yes, that sounds complicated, but what it means is that my network is now open for you to peruse. Why would I open my network to someone who seems to be ignorant of the protocols? I don’t want to be associated with that behavior, nor would I do business with someone who utilizes a network that way, so it’s not a loss to disconnect.

3 Linkedin is about QUALITY not QUANTITY

My third gripe and a very common mistake, is the false belief that someone who has a lot of connections must be very important. There are some people on Linkedin who will connect with anyone and everyone – this is called an “Open Networker” To say that someone has the “most” connections on Linked in does not say the same thing as having the most relationships. There is greater power in having relationships where you can ask or share or tell and it has some influence. The relative amount of influence if directly correlated to the depth of the relationship and the mutual respect. If I met you once at a networking event, and you immediately stared spamming my inbox, there is no mutual respect, no relationship, and no reason to continue to stay ‘connected’.

I suppose if you start an email with “I’m sorry to bother you, but…” you already know it’s not a good idea to send the email, right?

April 16, 2016 By Jody Raines 3 Comments

Social Media Marketing Tips: How To Optimize Your Blog

Social media marketing and website optimization are dependent upon adding content on an ongoing basis. Business blogging is a part of social media marketing where you can add dynamic keyword-rich content to a website. Assuming that the blog is part of the website, the blog can be a forum to express ideas, philosophies and share information.

Understanding the power of a blog includes making the commitment to use the blog in a way that it adds value to the website. Simply having a blog that is dormant does not add interest or value.

Many businesses make the mistake of having a blog, but then underutilize it. Here are three key blogging best practices that can help power your blog and help to optimize it’s value to your Internet marketing program and your website:

1. Blog often.

If you have a blog and you aren’t adding to it, it’s not really a blog. Blogs are meant to be living, breathing and dynamic content for your website. If you haven’t yet made the commitment, you really should blog at least once a week. Obviously if you can blog more, then you have more opportunities to connect with a potential customer.

2. Use keywords.

If you write for your blog without considering keywords in your content, you are missing a huge opportunity. Determing which keywords are effective and then weaving them into your articles can help your blog be discovered in Google searches. Using the Google keyword tool is a free way to evaluate keywords. Another trick is to use Google Analytics to evaluate how people are finding your website in order to focus on those topics.

3. Don’t sell.

Blogs add the most value to the website, when they complement the site, but are not sales oriented. Don’t make the mistake of using your blog just to pitch your products. Share information, thoughts, lists, ideas on topics that could potentially be of interest to your customers. By sharing information, you position yourself as an expert and a go-to source.

If you follow these best practices for blogging, be sure to stick to them. Like starting an exercise program or a diet, it’s only as effective as your commitment.

April 15, 2016 By Jody Raines

Online Safety: When To Beware The Invitation To Connect

Recently I received an invitation to connect to someone on Facebook. In and of itself, this is not an unusual occurance. Since I co-host several podcasts, and am active on Social Media, there are often people asking to be ‘friends’ who I don’t know personally, but this situation had my spidey senses tingling.

When it comes to social media safety, it helps to be cautious and look for the red flags.

There are some red flags that I noticed:

The person’s name was a “gag name”. Now this can happen, and may not be a total red flag, but if you receive a request from Seymore Bunns, or Anita Break you should most likely delve further into whether you truly want to accept this person among your connections. In this case, the person’s name was a page turner of sorts.
The profile picture and background picture are not of the person. Again, this may not be a true indicator that the person does not exist or is not real, however, if someone is trying to be overly clever and they faked the profile, then it’s another way to detect a false profile.
The profile is relatively new. If someone has a profile that was recently created and they have a ton of ‘friends’ then be cautious if you do not recognize the name.

All three of these indicators were in place for this particular friend request, but… there was more…..

All posts are memes and generic. If there is no personal content, that’s very odd. Every now and then, most people will post a picture of something that they are doing, or something they are eating or even a picture of their dog. If the only posts are third party shares, that’s another suspicious characteristic.
The friends that you are also connected to are primarily from similar circles. If you notice that the unknown person who wants to friend you is connected to several people from that same circle, you should be suspicious. Ask your friends whether htey really know the person,or whether they friended them because others were connected. If you have friends who are numbers people and really don’t care who they accept, then it’s important to discount their response to your inquiry.
Where it starts getting creepy is when the friend requester has many of your connections, but they are connected in ways that does not make sense. For example, with this request, not only were they connected to a ton of people that I network with locally, they also were somehow connected to people that I went to High School with, and who do not live in the area. The person also had connected to a guy I dated who now lives in another state. The liklihood of someone knowing this same circle of people from very different points of my sphere is more like flashing beacons than red flags. Just too much of a coincidence.

How do you handle the situation? I reached out to a few of my friends who were connected and asked whether they knew this perons or had met the person in real life. No one actually remembers meeting her. I think it’s safe to say that in this instance, it’s a nefarious purpose and therefore, I will not friend the person.

You may ask what difference this makes, and I will share with you a situation in my town where someone who had been allowed to connect started stalking and victimising females. None of the young ladies who were victims actually knew the stalker, but had accepted the person because he was a friend of their friends.

Be wary. Be careful. And do not post where you are going to be or what you are not going to be home. Don’t indiscriminantly friend people without knowing who they are or investigating why they wish to friend you. Sure, it may turn out to be fine, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

April 29, 2015 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

How To Identify A Social Media Friend or Stalker?

There seems to be a strange phenomena that is taking place and it’s a “new” way of connecting that is difficult to classify. The line between a new friend and a overly curious acquaintance has created a curious change in the way we protect or fail to protect our privacy.

The Facebook post that becomes a chat, for example, is an introduction of sorts. It’s a way that various people who may otherwise never connect, wind up discussion a topic with each other.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting about the season finale of The Walking Dead with several of my friends. As you can imagine, it was a lively post because as things happened, someone would make a comment and then others would chime in. All was cool, until a male friend made a comment about one of my female friend’s pets. They did not know each other, they live in different states, and their only connection to each other was through my association with both of them. The reason this was odd – was because the woman did not have a picture of her pet on her profile photo, so my conjecture is that my male friend went to her profile page to “check her out”.

I’ve noticed several connections made this way, and most of them are harmless. For example, a male friend of mine who is married is now connected to a female friend who has a life partner. Although they are dichotomous extremes in a political sense, ironically their sense of humor is shared, and therefore, they connected. I think that is kind of cool because under any other circumstance, these two people would never have ‘met’.

Another association is with a friend of mine who recently got a Siberian Husky puppy. Just so happens another friend of mine breeds and shows Huskies. By bringing the first person’s attention to the adorable videos of irresistable baby Huskies, he wound up connecting with my friend the breeder. Of course this ‘friendship’ now has a life of it’s own.

Every now and then, I have a friend request from someone I don’t know. I typically check to see how we are connected – what mutual friends we have. In most instances, I will send off a quick note to the mutual connection to ask how they know the person and whether the individual is legitimate. Periodically, I find that my friends have not been diligent in evaluating whether the profile is genuine. I’ve seen several situation s where I’ve been asked to connect with someone I thought I was already connected to, only to learn that their profile picture had been used to make a ‘fake’ account that was now harvesting their friends. A quick call to the original person may tip them off to potential fraud.

My advice is as follows:

1. Don’t post anything that is too personal or that you don’t want the world to know. Regardless of privacy settings the first rule is that NOTHING is private.

2. Periodically check your friends to determine if there are duplicates. If you find the dupe, a little bit of research may help a friend who may be unaware that their profile was duplicated or compromised.

3. Don’t open attachments that you are not sure of. I get these emails almost every day – an email that appears to come from a Facebook friend’s name, but it only has a link to a masked url. These can contain trojans or viruses, so you should be absolutely cautious before clicking on them. In fact, if you look at the name and then click on the name to see the email address it actually came from, you may be surprised it is also masked. In other words, it’s an email from an unknown person that appears to be coming from someone you know.

4. If someone you recently connected with starts commenting on old pictures, it can be disconcerting. Even more upsetting is they start posting pictures of you! I had a situation recently where an individual started posting pictures of people who had deceased during the year and tagging the family indicating that they hadn’t forgotten. In this instance, I think it was supposed to be a caring gesture, but it came across as very unsettling.

5. Be suspicious. I know, it sounds awful, but in this day and age where profiles can be created and deleted in the blink of an eye, there are too many charlatans intent on obtaining personal information. A healthy skepticism can save a lot of future grief.

What strange connections have you encountered? Have you been friend requested by a clone of a friend and you caught it? I’m curious what you are seeing, and if you have additional thoughts with regard to staying safe on social media sites.

Trust. What does it take to create trust, and how can trust be taken away?

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