Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Sunday Shorts – Being Strategic About Social Media Edition

Two years after social media really hit the mainstream, we’re still seeing people and companies fail to understand its importance and benefits.

The soundbites still doing the round are telling:

  • What’s the ROI of social media?
  • Why should I care?
  • Why do I need strategy when I can have a high Klout score instead?

These are just some examples – there are countless others, and they all point to a lack of education, understanding, explaining, etc.

Which is why this presentation from Richard Becker is probably one of the best I’ve seen, period, on what social media is and how it can play into your strategy. This quote alone sums up the issue perfectly:

The fundamental challenge for most organizations is that social media is one environment where messages work on a one-to-many, one-to-some, and one-to-one scale across multiple technologies at the same time in real time, but most communication-related professionals do not have this experience.

From personal experience, this is definitely one of the biggest reasons social media continues to be misunderstood by, and fails to bring success to, so many businesses.

Richard’s presentation offers a lot of the answers to the question of “why social media?”.

Enjoy. Oh, and if you want more smart stuff like this on a regular basis, make sure you subscribe to Richard’s blog – you won’t be disappointed.

Integrating Social Into Strategic Communication

A Special Friday Thank You from @JugnooMe to @HootSuite

They say “imitation” is the sincerest form of flattery – in which case, Jugnoo would love to thank our friends over at HootSuite.

Back in April, we came out of closed beta and opened up our platform to 1,000 users in an open beta. To celebrate this jump in status, we created a video in-house that shared an example of one of our users, the Bandit Coffee Group in Toronto.

The video showed how owner Kirk used Jugnoo to be effective on social media – connecting with customers and promoting offers – while still doing all their day-to-day business. Here’s the video below.


Simple. Fun. Clear.

Yesterday, social media dashboard folks HootSuite released a video that “…illustrates just how simple and useful social media can be.”

It uses an example of a bread and coffee place and how the owner connects with customers and promotes offers. Here’s the HootSuite video below:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/43914561[/vimeo]
It’s also simple. Fun. Clear. And the tune is jaunty!

So we’d just like to say thanks, HootSuite – great job and we appreciate the homage! 😉

In fact, we were so enamoured by the video, we sent these cupcakes to Hootsuite?s Vancouver offices ? hope you enjoyed, guys!

Thank you cupcakes from Jugnoo to HootSuite

This post also appears on the Jugnoo blog.

Social Media Numbers and the Bottom Line

Numbers are important, because they give us an idea of how successful something is.

Even small numbers can mean a big success. While two might seem a relatively little number in the grand scheme of things, you probably won?t complain too much if your sales team doubles your profits for you.

Big numbers are easier. Ten million products sold is a big success in any language.

In social media, though, the waters are a little less clear. 100,000 Twitter followers might mean something substantial, or it might mean a lot of autobots and gaming the system. 30,000 blog subscribers doesn?t necessarily mean 30,000 active RSS readers.

But a lot of social media experts will tell you numbers are key to succeed in social media ? the more your social reach, the more your clout.

To business owners, though, there?s only one real number that?s important ? the bottom line.

So, Social Media Expert X, how are your numbers going to increase my bottom line? The clock starts? NOW.

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Sunday Shorts – Businesses Doing It Right Edition

Businesses doing things right

Anyone that reads this blog regularly, or knows me on Twitter/Facebook, would probably say I do my fair share of questioning (or criticizing, depending on your take).

It’s probably a fair statement – because we all should question and criticize when something seems off. Otherwise, we’ll live in a world of unicorns and pixie dust where no-one is held accountable. Meh to that!

Anyhoo… As much as there are people and companies doing things “wrong” (subjective to your thoughts), there are also companies, people and businesses doing things right.

Here are just three.

Whyte & Mackay

In my last post, I shared a great video on how Scottish whisky maker Whyte & Mackay are connecting with their customers through the power of empathy, storytelling and humour.

Following that, both Whyte & Mackay and Richard Paterson were on Twitter and showed why they’re winning over so many people online.

whyte and mackay tweetwhyte and mackay tweetRichard Paterson tweets

By reading the post itself, they knew that it was Phil Baumann that instigated it and made sure to thank him too, and not just the referring source.

By doing so, they immediately raised the “fan” level of both Phil and myself, along with a lot of others we’ve shared the story with.

Takeaway? The bigger picture isn’t always in front of you. Recognizing the various arms of a conversation makes you a far smarter business.

Canadian Pet Connection

I love the guys at Canadian Pet Connection in Oakville, Ontario (disclaimer – we’re friends). This is a successful father and son team who’ve built a great reputation in the area as a business doing things right.

When you visit their store, they’ll take the time to chat with you as a person and not just a customer. They’ll offer expert advice on how to look after your beloved pet, as well as recommend products that might mean you going to a competitor, because they love animals so much.

They take that offline experience online, where their blog shares advice on healthy pets, safety concerns and more.

Canadian Pet Connection blog

On Twitter, the son Brandon often looks for conversations of pet owners talking about their pet’s birthday, and offer to ship them a surprise birthday pack. Cool, right?

Takeaway: If your customer has an awesome experience with you offline, transfer that online and expand it to a wider audience. The results will speak for themselves.

Seth Godin

Earlier this week, marketer and author Seth Godin sent out an email to promote the release of Steve Pressfield’s new book, Turning Pro. All well and good – except when the pitch was used in reference to the death of Ray Bradbury.

At best, the tie-in was misplaced (citing the similar thinking of Pressfield and Bradbury) – at worst, it could have been seen as using someone’s name to shill a book.

Clearly others felt that way too.

Jim Connolly Seth GodinOlivier Blanchard Seth Godin

There were other updates across Facebook and Google+ that followed the line of thinking that the pitch was horribly misplaced. Something Seth clearly heard.

Seth Godin Ray Bradbury

Takeaway: We all make errors in judgement – that’s human. How we deal with these errors defines the perception people have of us. Seth showed that taking responsibility, not making any crap excuses and apologizing is the smarter thing to do.

These are just three examples of businesses and people doing things right – there are many more. The important thing is, we recognize them and the reasons why they’re the right and smart approach, and how that benefits the person or company in the long run.

Something we can all learn from, no?

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Connecting Your Brand to Your Customers the Whyte & Mackay Way

Connect to your customers

In social media, we often talk about the need to connect to our customers more. Yes, we speak about that outside social media too, but the medium allows us the opportunity to do this better and on a larger scale.

However, saying something and actually doing it are two very different things. It’s all well and good saying, “Let’s connect!”, but implementing isn’t always easy.

Except, it can be.

Every business is a customer – if you’re not thinking like that, you’re already behind. We’re not just providers – we’re recipients of knowledge. The feedback our customers give us should be viewed higher than any financial transaction they give, because that helps us improve, and grow, and understand how we connect better.

Whyte & Mackay understand this. Instead of just buying blanket ads and dead space to fill, they speak of what their customer loves – the experience of being a whisky drinker.

They talk of the smell; the warmth; the delivery. Their words help the customer experience their product to the fullest, and when you enjoy something the way it’s meant to be enjoyed, you want to experience that feeling again. And again. And again.

This video by Whyte & Mackay Master Blender Richard Paterson is the perfect example of how to sell your product while truly connecting with your customer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjrkd_RZFFY[/youtube]

It’s fun; informative; no buzz words; and takes pot shots at some industry practices while educating on the reasons why they’re wrong.

Now, while not every brand can deliver a video in this way, it’s a great primer on what works – being yourself and being your customer.

Works for me. You?

Hat-tip Phil Baumann for sending me the video.

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