Ahoy! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day

In honor of my good friend
Mark, who never fails to miss this celebration: it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Yes, September 19 has been so dubiously dubb.

And How?

How this caught on across the web, as well as the world is confounding.

Argh! So here’s one for ye mateys:

On Facebook, peer at the bottom of any Facebook page.
Click on the blue link that says English (or the language name you use).
Now change it in honor of this unofficial holiday to English (Pirate).

That should do the trick.

Now cruise about Facebook and read the text on the pages for a harty laugh.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Talk Like a Pirate Day Official website is here.
www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

Tweeters for Hire: Big Business’s Human Engagements

Watching major corporations take the plunge in social media is more than an experiment.

According to this AP article companies are diving in to humanizing their brands.

“Multinational corporations, such as Ford Motor Co. and Coca-Cola Co., are beginning to use social media to increase positive sentiment, build customer rapport and correct misinformation, says Adam Brown, Coca-Cola’s Atlanta-based director of social media.”

Fallen on Deaf Ears?
Hardly. Transparency and openness in communication seems to go a long way for both companies and their consumers.

The article cites that, according to Ford  Motors’ social media strategist Scott Monty, “You’re addressing whoever wrote the original comment. But you’re doing it in the public square.”

Read the full post here: More Big Businesses Hire Tweeters.

MidWest Corps “Get Closer” with Social Media

The St. Louis Business Journal reports major corporate brands investing in social media to respond to consumer need for connectivity through conversation and to enrich marketing effectiveness.

Read the full post here.

Social Media Luminaries Unfollow to Rebuild Valued Relationships

The social web’s top influencers “get religion” and unfollow hoards. Improve the value of their own information consumption, quality communications, relationships and knowledge management.

The story of The Phoenix is apt here.

Social Media pioneers are finding the need to rise from the flames of their pioneering experiences to rebuild value back into their relationships: with their friends, their followers, and their social utilities.

Huffington Post columnist Soren Gordhamer recently amplifies the concept of “unfollowing” friends, fans, and followers to increase the relevancy of a user’s personal information consumption… and sanity.

Gordhamer says, “The art of unfollowing, then, is a way of valuing our time, interests, and goals. The good news is that every time we recognize and act on this, we have more time to find and follow people with which we have greater alignment and shared interests.” Read the full post here.

So what prompted this?

Robert Scoble, our archetypal phoenix.

Rising from the Ashes
Scoble is the social media and new media evangelizer and promoter of strong ideas on social media tools and news makers who produces more content and informed opinion than a boardroom full of “NY Times” reporters.

His recent post is actually an atonement for his early adopter zealousness to follow as many as possible and, frankly, anyone who followed him.

For the “see I told ya” crowd of internet and social media Johnny-Come-Latelys, I look at it this way, Scoble blazed a trail and got scorched, yet is present enough to formulate lessons learned and kind enough to share those learnings from his real life experience.

Scoble’s Lessons Learned

His solution? Be selective in seeking and maintaining relationships.

[M]y major learning of social networks is that you should be very choosy on who to listen to and who to put into your view.
-Robert Scoble

Reason being, the pursuit of personal growth through learning. In unfollowing over 100,000 on twitter, Scoble found some real benefits.

• Improved Content Delivery
  1. Less information “noise” from those he did not care about;
  2. Fewer to “no” spam as direct messages.
• Quality Knowledge Management
  Increased personal learning from his social utilities from those he cares to follow.

Some great lessons learned from a consummate entrepreneur and serial pioneer.

Thanks, Robert.

So, what will you do to get and give value in your social network participation? In your online relationships? How do you increase your quality connections and information flows?

Always care about your flowers and your friends.
Otherwise they’ll fade, and soon your house will be empty.
-English Proverb

I find that as we all seek to understand and reap the benefits of these social utilities in this new and evolving social medium, we might be best served to cautiously apply life’s tested axioms and proverbs as we transfer our ability to increase our relationships and information or knowledge acquisition from the internet and it’s utilitarian technologies.

For in the end, the Internet is still a tool and we are the objects of value summed of our experiences shared through relationships manifest in other’s memory, told in their stories, and demonstrated in their ability to learn from us.

See What Others Say
Some well-known sayings on building and maintaining friendships:
http://www.quotegarden.com/friendship.html

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Amos White is an Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42 or his blog http://amoswhite3.wordpress.com.

Study: Twitter Users Want to Discover, Download and Pay for Music

New Study: Twitter Users Want to Discover, Download and Pay for Music

A recent Hypebot blog post reports that a new study reveals that Twitter users are more inclined to download and purchase online music than the average.

“Twitter has the power to entertain
– and to motivate music fans to purchase…”

According to NPD’s consumer tracking, 33% of Twitter users reported buying a CD in the prior 3 months, and 34% said they had purchased a digital download. That compares positively to overall web users at 23% and 16% respectively.

The “Consumer” Takeaway

The marketing takeaway according to NPD entertainment industry analyst Russ Crupnick,  is if “used properly Twitter has the power to entertain — and to motivate music fans to purchase more new albums, downloads, merchandise, and concert tickets.”

Now if we can only get gas companies and financial institutions to listen and engage in meaningful conversations we might develop new and beneficial products that better serve consumers as well.

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Amos White is an Internet Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42 and on his blog http://amoswhite3.wordpress.com.