Atlanta, women, social media, and oh yeah, marketing
Toby Bloomberg has started a series called “Atlanta Women in Social Media Marketing,” and I’m included in the first edition. When she asked if I wanted to participate, I said I didn’t really think I’d be a good fit, since I don’t use social media for marketing. But she said she wanted to include me anyway, so I tried my best to think of relevant things to say.
Here’s part of it what I said, and you know what, I think I was speaking a lot of sense here, if I do say so myself!
If [business is] not your primary focus with social media, you’re really looked down upon by a lot of people; some of them can’t even conceive of someone not using social media purely as a marketing tool. It’s frustrating because the people who are busy building their “personal brand” and establishing themselves as “thought leaders” wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing if it weren’t for those of us who got into blogging, etc. years ago, back when the business world as a whole scoffed at us.
More on a recurring theme
Callie Simms has a post made of WIN:
I don’t know why men (yes, it is men only – never women) think because we write about sex, marketing sex, sex & society et al., that we are available. I was astonished to find how many mainstream, social media/SEO men would contact me via Twitter or Facebook to see if we could have “drinks”. I was excited at first, “Wow – mainstream people take note of my work and wanting to meet!”
Uh, I realized that “coffee” was not their intention, it was can I get a free piece of ass and someone to support me. This progressed into another interesting phenomena: When I would attend webinar as “Callie” that I would receive emails from employees of the companies that hosted the webinar. Again, I thought it was about the company itself, but it wasn’t. The only thing it was about was their employee’s side adult businesses, or should I say – wanna be businesses. It prompted the series I wrote on being an ethical marketer. I’ve learned some valuable lessons.
So now I can say – No, you will not fuck me and no, I am not gonna teach you to be an adult marketer for free. You will PAY ME – for marketing consulting, not for sex that is.
Good and bad blogger outreach
At this point, I’ve been to half a dozen social media unconferences, and at almost all of them, there has been much discussion about how/why/if PR and marketing folks should “reach out” to The Bloggers.
Should PR and marketing departments be embracing social media? Of course they should; and fortunately, a lot of them seem to be past the if and focusing on the how. But for some reason, that’s where there seems to be a major roadblock to understanding.
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