The Social Media Professor

Internet Marketing In Real Life

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Niklas Myhr Melanie Duncan Devin Duncan
With Melanie and Devin

I very much enjoy having my former students visit my classes and today was definitely no exception as my Internet/Social Media Marketing class was visited by Melanie and Devin Duncan. Melanie Duncan graduated in 2008 and met her future husband Devin Duncan while he was also studying at Chapman University. As true serial entrepreneurs, they have worked on, and successfully launched, a number of businesses together including Custom Greek Threads, Luxury Monograms, as well as a business around the Melanie’s personal brand. [Read more…]

Staple Yourself to the Customer Experience

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Stapler

Today’s wakeup call was provided by Brian Solis with his new blog post “The 5 Pillars of New Media Strategy.” Brian argues convincingly that we all should stop looking for a magic formula or success recipe to guide us in our social media travails by simply arguing that it all depends on who we are serving or building a meaningful relationship with. While I myself occasionally fall prey to the temptation to offer list type “secrets” such as in “3 Keys To Social Success,” I do agree that too much of the focus is placed on the social media delivery side. As a consequence, the tendency is to be less concerned about how our social media efforts will be received by customers. [Read more…]

Stick Shift Social Media

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It is increasingly rare these days to encounter a car with a manual transmission and many young drivers barely know what it is, let alone are able to drive them. Some of the advantages of driving with a stick shift, such as the increased attentiveness and the sense of being one with the car, and are forgotten or ignored as the convenience factor of automatic transmissions wins more and more people over. There are those who still resist, though, those who swear by the superiority of manual stick shifting.

One twist to this dilemma was introduced last week when I met a parent here in Orange County who said that their kid’s first car will get a manual transmission. Why? Well, then they would at least know that their kid would be so overwhelmed by getting the gear into the right gear, which means that they wouldn’t be sending text messages! [Read more…]

Trust is Queen

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Queen's 80th Birthday

“Content is King” is an oft-uttered “secret” to success in social media and while I don’t think content will become unimportant any time soon, it is also becoming increasingly clear that just offering content, even good quality content, will not be enough any longer if it ever was.

“Context is King” is an alternative statement which has grown in popularity. The focus on context reflects the need for not just the right content to be provided but that it also needs to be made available to the right people, on the right platform, in the right conversation, at the right time, with the right tone, in the right quantity, etc. Sounds like logistics, right? [Read more…]

My Favorite Marketing Term

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There are still executives out there who seem to believe that success can be had by simply meeting customer needs. Well, perhaps that in itself is not that simple as it takes some effort to first identify a target segment and then conduct some market research to better understand the customer needs. Still, that is no longer sufficient.

Why not? Simple, technology and globalization has enabled more and better competitors from around world to also market to the whole world both online and offline. In such a hypercompetitive environment, you are toast if you just meet customer needs. Selling yet another me-too product just like many others who conducted similar market research studies is not going to cut it. [Read more…]

The Social Media Professor

Orange County, California
United States

Also at NiklasMyhr.com

Contact

Please email me at niklas [at] thesocialmediaprofessor.com if you have any questions.