Disqus - Latest Comments for jgraziani

Re: 10 iPhone Apps to Get You Back to School

jgraziani — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:43:15 -0000

Good list! Thanks for sharing it. Just an fyi -- students and parents are concerned about making their back-to-school budgets stretch, and there's an app for that: AAA Discounts. It's free and available for Android too. It tells you what retailers near you are offering discounts to AAA members, gives a summary of the discount and tells you how to get there from where you are.

Re: Friday Fun: The Buzzword Graveyard

jgraziani — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:15:01 -0000

When someone says, "ping me" I imagine picking up a golf club and bopping them on the head. (For the non-golfers, as in Ping golf clubs.)

Re: Friday Fun: The Buzzword Graveyard

jgraziani — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:09:10 -0000

I've always used "content is king" to denote quality, as in: "The better your content is the more readers and advertisers you will attract. Content is king." Never really knew that anyone used the phrase in any other context, such as volume. That doesn't make sense to me, because if all you do is churn out words/pics/videos it's likely your quality will suffer.

Re: Friday Fun: The Buzzword Graveyard

jgraziani — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:06:08 -0000

"Over-arching". Never did like that one, Just sounds like it hurts.

Re: 30 Lessons from an Accidental Entrepreneur

jgraziani — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:37:05 -0000

Make it a habit to give back to the community on a regular basis. Giving should be part of your corporate responsibility from day one. Make it a part of the budget if you can but it doesn't have to be money -- think outside the box.

Re: 11 Lessons For Social Media’s Future

jgraziani — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:09:30 -0000

I like this approach Amber -- turning the question around and seeing what it looks like from a different perspective. #3 is something I've been telling co-workers for a while now and it has helped people embrace social more easily because they realize they don't have the change everything about their work. In fact, once they realize they have some type of applicable experience, then they get excited about the prospect of something new. It's much simpler (and often less expensive) to adapt current processes to social than to re-create the wheel, especially if the process you have is working well. Like #11 also -- don't do this often enough. Thanks for this post -- very well thought out. Interested in seeing others' comments.

Re: Facebook and Privacy: It’s Time to Move On [VIDEO]

jgraziani — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:35:52 -0000

Nothing has changed. This video is a PR puff piece (surprised Mashable would include it since it's so obviously an ad). Everyone will reset their privacy controls *again* and then Facebook will come in and change them *again* to whatever Facebook wants them to be anyway. Nothing new here.

Re: Will Google Buzz Become A Victim of Online Oversaturation & Marketing Mishaps?

jgraziani — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:38:24 -0000

Great post Shelley/Brian, and I agree that Google needs a little help. I was on the phone yesterday afternoon with a couple of folks from Google, and one of them kept saying, "We're supposed to launch something new today." So I finally asked if she meant Buzz and let them know I had seen a few articles already. So even the Google team was unsure whether or not it had launched. I'm not sure what the disconnect is -- most corp. PR teams would be learning from and sharing their experiences with the rest of dept., and working to keep the same issues from happening again. But it is hard to get excited about Buzz when 1) we aren't over the let-down experienced with Wave (which you described so perfectly!) and 2) we're already happy and entrenched with Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc. Buzz will be a much harder sell. Thanks, again for the great post!

Re: AOL Relaunches: Will Monsters and Goldfish Boost the Stock Price?

jgraziani — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:35:28 -0000

It was due for an update. The new look is a breath of fresh air for a very stale site. Ditto for the new main page (at least they didn't hide the mail link this time). I think AOL -- um, Aol -- is a strong enough brand to survive the slight logo change. It remains to be seen whether the company can survive on its own.

Re: Social Media Needs To Become a Team Sport

jgraziani — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:46:28 -0000

Amber, here's one way to look at it: You want someone who is naturally social -- the person who goes to a party and makes new friends, not the one who sits back and only watches. Because you want someone who is not afraid to engage others.

Find a handful of these people in the company then have them sit down with the customer service and public relations teams (yikes! yes I said it, PR). Customer service people have a great attitude and excel at finding solutions. PR people are the crafters of the company message, and while you don't want to sound corporate in social media, you do want to get your message across. So the PR folks will tell you what's important to say or not say, then the social person can convey the idea in their own terms. Make sense?

I know a small company may not have all these people on staff, but if you can hire consultants occasionally to help that might be a good idea. Just a thought.

Re: Social Media Needs To Become a Team Sport

jgraziani — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:14:15 -0000

DJ, you're right. Fortunately, I work for a company that has a forward-thinking executive team. Several people in different depts are doing different things with social media. While mainly independent, there is no one person doing everything. There's plenty of work to go around! The result is we all have to depend on each other some of the time. For instance, I handle Twitter and am on the fringe of our Facebook/MySpace/YouTube endeavors, but have nothing to do with the blog. If I want the blog to do something for me I have to go talk to the editor. And that's no problem, because I try to tweet about the blog frequently, and at some point the blog is going to want Facebook to promote something for them. It all works.

I think you can teach your current employees who are social minded to engage in social media for the company, but you also want strategic thinkers (as with any other communications endeavor) who will be looking for the next big thing, the proper channels to reach your audience or a new audience. If you have to go outside to find that person, then you do.

The real problem in this economy, is finding the resources to build and develop a social media team. Many companies are working with what they have. Due to budget issues it's come down to making a decision about which projects to pursue and what to set on the back burner. To stick with the football analogy, maybe it's the difference between kicking the extra point (safe) or going for two (risk). Each company has to determine how much risk it can take right now, but maybe when the economy gets better more companies will be creating larger teams, faster.

Re: Hey, Tech Bloggers Complaining About Twitter Ads, Be Quite

jgraziani — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:58:33 -0000

You're absolutely right. I almost thought that the difference would be that with an ad there is an expectation that money would exchange hands at some point, but if the bloggers have ads on their sites then it's the same thing. Not being judgmental, just saying.... Everyone has to make a living.

Re: Are E-Riches For You

jgraziani — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:31:41 -0000

Marketing books are not my thing. I might read this book in sections, when I need specific info to answer a question, rather than straight through. But writing is my thing. After 30+ years of writing professionally I can tell you that a person's depth of knowledge is revealed in "what" they write -- how well they know and understand their subject. A person's depth of character is revealed in "how" they write -- their style, phraseology, expressiveness. It's likely that we gravitate to writers who style agrees with our own character. I don't know if that's what is happening here -- I don't pretend to know what's in someone else's head or heart, but it might be worth thinking about.

Re: Emergency Preparedness Lessons Learned

jgraziani — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:23:59 -0000

That's quite an adventure. I'm glad everyone made it home ok. I work for AAA and just want to suggest that motorists carry an emergency kit in the car. The kit usually holds things like jumper cables, reflectors or flares, flashlight, etc. You can get them at most AAA offices or sometimes big box stores. Also, if you have a laptop with you, you can contact AAA roadside assistance online (no phone service needed) as long as you can connect wirelessly. AAA's TripTik Travel Planner is online as well so you can create your own maps, review different routes, add hotels or other stops to your map, and print it before you leave home. If you're driving in the winter you'll need different things in your emergency kit such as a shovel (for snow) and a space blanket for warmth. For more tips on staying safe while driving (or if you break down) see www.AAA.com/publicaffairs and click "On the Road".

Re: Is Your Web Presence Multi-Use

jgraziani — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:14:51 -0000

It's really tough in hard economic times to be everywhere doing everything with limited resources. We took the approach of looking at who our members are and trying to meet them where they are. Trouble was, not many were engaging in social media (spectators or non-participants). But another goal is to reach out to new members, who are on social media. Repurposing existing content or engaging friends/fans online to create their own content has worked well, but there is still a lot to do especially when the group is large and extremely varied.

Re: Are You a Trust Agent

jgraziani — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:53:54 -0000

Very insightful and thought-provoking piece, Chris. Thanks so much. If this is anything like what the book has to say, sign me up! I'm a trust agent in a couple of areas, much more so than the others, so it looks like I've got some work to do. Part of the fun is learning from others, so thanks again for sharing your knowledge. I'd like to meet you if you come to Florida.

Re: Tune Up Your Personal Message

jgraziani — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:19:37 -0000

Really great ideas, Chris. Thanks for sharing them. I'm always impressed with how much and how often you're willing to share what you've learned with others. As part of your online audience, I appreciate that very much.

Re: A Simple Presence Framework

jgraziani — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:04:48 -0000

Great post, Chris! This is going to help integrate my social media plan into the larger communications plan at work. Thanks!

Re: Why it's time to break out of Twitter (Scripting News)

jgraziani — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:15:26 -0000

Thanks for the info, Jason. I was wondering about this, as I'm sure many Twitter users have been. But my question is: If people pay to be on the list, doesn't that actually de-value the list? Think about your favorite brands and the companies that own them -- they could easily come up with 10K per month and scoff at the low price, too. But then the list has no value to consumers/readers. It's just advertising.

I still think that ultimately the real value for individuals is in simply following the people who offer insight, information and comraderie who you wouldn't normally meet or talk to without a venue like Twitter. But I understand the company's right to try this out and see what happens. They will have to figure out a way to monetize the site eventually -- maybe this is a precursor.

Re: Mashable on Tumblr - Twitter as the New Religion (No offence...

jgraziani — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:56:24 -0000

For Christians, more sad than funny because for some it's probably true!

Re: Is your video resume up to date?

jgraziani — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:36:08 -0000

I'd be very interested in finding out how many videos they receive. Can you let us know if you get that stat?

Re: The Future of Sports is Boobies

jgraziani — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:06:19 -0000

Can't help but think that they are alienating a *lot* of female sports fans. Me for one. Probably won't be visiting that site at all, regardless of what they have to offer.

Re: Blogger Bumper Sticker Contest [part 1]

jgraziani — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:53:57 -0000

Spinoff of JoLynn's idea:
Bloggers Do It In Their Underwear

Re: Blogger Bumper Sticker Contest [part 1]

jgraziani — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:51:33 -0000

Trackbacks Welcome

Re: Blogger Bumper Sticker Contest [part 1]

jgraziani — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:50:08 -0000

A Blogger is Watching