NYT Offers Advice to Combat the "Age of Anxiety" by Changing How You Interact with Social Media

We've long felt that social media is one of the contributing reasons that many Americans are feeling anxious. That's part of why we think we're living in the "Age of Anxiety."

As part of our predictions for 2020, we said we expected the media to cover this, and the New York Times recently provided some tips as part of its "Smarter Living" initiative, entitled, "How to Turn Depressing Social Media Into a Positive Influence."

According to the Times, "The current state of the modern world is a billion voices screaming for your attention, and it’s easy to let the most negative ones filter through and bring you down. It can be exhausting, and if your real life is already a struggle, adding digital gloom can be overwhelming."

The article, whose subhead says, "Don’t let Facebook, Instagram or Twitter become negative aspects of your life. Here’s how to fix them," provides tips on for those three social media platform such as:

1. Be selective who you follow. "Don’t follow accounts or hashtags you don’t like."
2. Go back and unfollow friends "who only post negative things...or (those) who only writes rude comments."
3. Don't click on things you don't like. The reason: Instagram knows what you look at so it will continue to serve up photos similar to the others you've tapped. "Click on something else. It won't take long to adjust and show you that."
4. Skip Insta's Search page. Instead, "only look at the accounts you follow."
5. Consider muting or blocking on Twitter to avoid "the most terribly toxic tweeters."
6. "Enable the Quality filter and other advanced filters to cut down on replies from accounts with only a few followers (i.e., likely spam or bots)."
7. "Don't post anything you don't want." People sometimes feel compelled to post but you don't have to.

Those are good tips, and there are more in the article so it's worth checking out.

We have another tip: When posting photos or info that includes other people, ask them in advance if they're okay doing so. We know a frequent poster who uploaded group photos that included friends' young kids. The parents and the kids were unhappy to be included; they just didn't want to be included. 

We do expect people to take social media vacations -- that is: to take time off from checking social media -- this year, especially as the presidential election approaches. But the need to take a social media vacation isn't due only to wanting to avoid politics (your own or someone from across the aisle). We feel that the need to take time away from social media can be beneficial and help you be present in a way that constant checking can't do.

Four Thoughts about Social Media for Companies Still Not Conducting Social Media

It's probably safe to say that there are more blogs than we truly need. Yet it's also true that there are businesses (usually B2Bs) and organizations (usually smaller nonprofits) that should be using social media and blogs to get out their messages and stories -- but haven't done so yet.

One reason to do so: traditional print media have been shrinking in size, both the number of reporters and the size of their issues. That means the competition to get an article about your organization is tougher than ever, and that there's less space for that article about you.

Second, today's reporters have to file more stories -- plus they also use social media to cross-promote their articles. For example, we know that local TV reporters are pressed by their bosses to continue to post content across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram; not sure if they got bonuses or not but their bosses are well aware if their numbers decrease. And a freelancer we spoke to this week said that she got turned down for an assignment because she doesn't have enough Twitter followers.  

Given that, we tell reluctant clients that if reporters, who have an outlet to communicate stories, are also expected to use social media to drive traffic to their website, the same goes to them too.

So here are some basic thoughts on why and how reluctant organizations should engage via social media.

1. Social media and blogs are a great way to establish a brand, a corporate personality and values, which are increasingly important, whether  the company is a B2B or a B2C. Customers, whether they’re business or consumers, want to know who they’re buying from, so having a different voice – one that could be informal and snarky on social media while the blog is formal and stodgy, may confuse customers, partners and employees. That said, we had a client with two divisions, one that marketed to small businesses and the other that marketed to large companies; in that case, we recommended they developed a distinct voice and different communication vehicles since the two customer segments had different needs and resources. 
2. It's important to understand that each platform has a different set of characteristics, how people interact, what they respond to. One way to start is to focus on one of social media platforms, and get comfortable interacting and engaging on that platform before launching on another platform. Keep in mind that over time, those features evolve, so it’s important to understand how users interact with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. 
3. Many larger companies have create a consistent voice by creating a style guide offering suggestions regarding word choice, tone, style, and artwork, is a valuable tool. Style guides are used to ensure there’s a consistent voice across marketing, such as email newsletters, brochures, and ads but they should also be used to establish or maintain a consistent voice across social media and blogs. New hires responsible for social media and blogs need to review the style guides to get up to speed quickly about the brand, and style guides need to be reviewed after a significant change (like an acquisition) or every year or so to ensure the company is keeping up with social media changes.,
4. Keep in mind that you may need to have different Twitter accounts to reach different audiences. You may want one for customer service, another for HR, and another for the main brand, to highlight key milestones, new product or service news, etc. Further, HR might use LinkedIn for recruiting and Facebook groups for communicating to current employees or former employees in so-called alumni groups. Twitter or LinkedIn could be ideal for thought leadership campaigns aimed at customers. In each case, the choice of voice, subject matter and style may be different. The company may still want to keep the tone consistent, and still should use a shared calendar so that each group knows what the other will be posting.  

We have helped a range of clients to get involved in social media, including small businesses and technically oriented B2Bs (that otherwise felt their customers wouldn't seek advice and insight or make purchase decisions via social media). For one, a biotech client, we increased traffic to its site by 95%. For another client, a financial software developer that was a small division in a large global company, the work we conducted on social media, including a blog, got the attention of global marketing, and our client get recognized for its cutting-edge social media content. That company's social media work also enabled it to leverage and highlight customer case studies that led to more new business opportunities.

If you have questions about how to engage in social media, please contact us at info@birnbachcom.com.

Bloomberg Businessweek Validates Our "Age of Anxiety" Prediction

Add to Bloomberg Businessweek the list that already includes the Wall St. Journal and the New York Times of publications that have validated our prediction that 2018 is the "age of anxiety."

Check out our prediction here but check out, also, this article by Bloomberg Businessweek's Editorial Board: "A New Year's Wish: Better Social Media:Why is everyone hooked on a product that makes them miserable?" (Original print headline: "Social Media Doesn't Have to Be Terrible.")

A key line:

Across Silicon Valley, insiders have lately been raising similar concerns, and fretting that the business model of social media may be undermining the well-being of its users. A growing body of research suggests they have a point.

Even more significant:

Among the young, social media may be playing a role in rising rates of depression and suicide. It seems to induce feelings of envy, anxiety and inadequacy. It appears to reduce self-esteem, inhibit sleep, interfere with schoolwork and (of all the ironies) encourage antisocial behavior. Some two-thirds of kids now say they wouldn't mind if social media didn't exist. And who can blame them? 

The problem is that it's hard to quit.

Welcome to what we’ve called the age of anxiety. The things that we rely on to get through our day, to connect to family, friends, colleagues, and our communities at large are the same things that undermine our sense of self and our happiness.

Worse – many of us recognize that our reliance on our screens and on social media is making us unproductive and unhappy but we can’t break the addiction. And this isn’t just a problem for teens; it’s a problem for everyone.

Bloomberg Businessweek’s Editorial Board suggests that “it’s up to social media business to make its products more humane and less exploitive” but we don’t think they are truly motivated to do so since making it easier to disconnect means taking a hit on their revenue.

Look, we don’t have an answer, either. And we continue to be on social media, too.

Hoping won’t make it so, but as Bloomberg Businessweek’s Editorial Board says about what social media tries to do – bring about human connection – “it’s worth reflecting on how to meet that desire (human connection) – without making everyone miserable in the process.”

Couldn’t agree with that more. Do you have suggestions for how to reduce our anxiety? Let us know.

Is Your Organization Social Media Responsive?

What seems like a long time ago, the news cycle was about 24 hours -- from the time "news" happened to when it would appear in newspapers and then on TV and radio. (At that time, cable news didn't really exist.)

Now, the news cycle is probably an hour -- tops -- before it hits social media.

It used to be that if you were in a crisis, you had hours to assess and determine how to respond.

Hours is a luxury.

Six years ago, during the Arab Spring, Kenneth Cole, a clothing designer also known for provocative ad campaigns, posted a provocative tweet in the morning and didn't check back until late in the afternoon when he realized Twitter was in an uproar because he didn't update or apologize in the initial blow back.

The fact that he was in meetings and busy was seen as no excuse.

Companies no longer have hours -- they didn't even have that back in 2011 -- to contemplate a response.

We see the implications of this everyday, whether it is a tweet rant from Trump or a poorly executed tweet from a brand or media property.

Unfortunately, most companies aren't social media responsive, by which we mean: able to respond quickly to a problem involving them on social media.

Here are some steps to consider:

• Don't rely on apps that post content to also alert you to a potential problem. Posting content is very different from monitoring and generating alerts. Consider subscribing to an alert service so that you don't find out about a problem only the next time you log on to the app. Too many services -- even Twitter -- do a better job of capturing mentions without doing a good job alerting you. (We're not going to mention specific potential suppliers since some of these companies and a lot of their functionality can change very quickly.)
• Make sure appropriate trusted people within your organization have the username and passwords for all major social media platforms, and are comfortable posting onto them. Too often, the login information for a company's social media accounts are held by different people so that if a problem happens, and the person managing Twitter is in an all-day off-site, there's no one else who can access the site to try to put out a fire. Sometimes, we've seen, the person in charge of, say, Facebook, has left the company without designating someone as the administrator, only as someone who can post. It's important that trusted people can back up the main driver if that driver is out of the office. Also, for this reason, it's important to know when key people -- whether it's the social media guru or the executive to be quoted -- are on vacation or otherwise unreachable for long periods.
• Do scenario planning to practice how to respond. One hopes to never have to use a crisis plan but it really is helpful to develop one, even if just for social media. In this case, you would look at likely areas for concern -- could it be a customer complaint? A rogue tweet (meant, perhaps, for someone's personal account)? A hacked account? A legal issue? What should you do to address this issues? Without a scenario planning, you may not have an idea of what to do when seconds count.

By the way, the same should be done with a look to how to respond to the media. 

For example, there used to be something known as a "day-two" story -- a story that provided a different aspect of the story getting media's attention. On the first day, the news breaks. On day two, one might pitch a story that provides more context to yesterday''s breaking news.

As with everything else, the time to develop and pitch day-two stories has shortened considerably. Now known as "news jacking," the idea of responding to breaking news and inserting your company in an appropriate and positive way, you need to respond with a contextual pitch within hours, not days. The context to the story that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick started hitting as soon as the initial stories began hitting. 

While it's true that stories still appeared about a week after he was pushed out, the names of the executives who were being quoted were big name celebrity executives like SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer. 

If you want to be able to position yourself as an expert to the media on a breaking news topic, you need to respond much faster than you used to in order to get coverage.

Of course, you still have time to write a blog article for your corporate blog (like this one) after the fact but that's not the same as being quoted in a reputation-making outlet, blog or podcast. Your team and the executive(s) in charge have to have a sense of urgency.

Without that urgency, you may be able to respond but you won't truly be responsive.

As a caveat: Not every organization can or should move that quickly. But we're speaking to those organization whose marketing director is looking for quick hits by news jacking without providing the resources or the ability to move as quickly as you have to secure coverage.

Five Tips for B2B Startups Considering PR and Social Media

I was recently asked for five tips for B2B startups considering PR and social media. I came up with these five somewhat random tips, and will come up with more next month. This is not meant to be comprehensive but they are intended to help be specific to the process of PR and social media.

Let me know what you think.

1.      If your startup has never engaged in PR before, ask the following questions:

·        Are you ready? We’ve had some clients who thought they were ready to launch but weren’t. It can take time to actually be ready – but you don’t necessarily need a finalized product or service. You do need to have strong positioning and compelling messages, a clear understanding of what differentiates your business from the competition. This can be a challenge since startups often pivot their business model until they get traction.

·        Who will be coordinating the PR program? Will it be the founder, a marketing executive, an office manager, or someone else? And will that person have the time and resources? We’ve worked with people at those levels, and have made it work but it can be difficult if PR is just another plate they need to keep spinning.

·        Do you need ongoing PR or is project-based a better fit? From an agency perspective, an ongoing PR campaign is better – and not just from a cash flow perspective but because it enables long-term strategies -- but that may not be ideal for cash-stretched startups with not a lot of news. Talk to your prospective agency; if they aren’t interested in project work until your startup has established a regular flow of news, they might not be the right agency for you.

2.      Are you goals realistic? There are two levels to this:

·        Are you realistic in terms of your story, resources, customers, etc.? You may have a great product and a great proof of concept, but if you don’t have a paying customer, some media won’t be able to cover you. (This is particularly true in B2B markets.) We’ve also been told by clients that they want to launch within two months but when we get in, we find they’re not ready (see #1, above).

·        Are you realistic in terms of your goals based on your budgets and internal resources? Recently a prospective customer with the related businesses asked us to 1) Pitch radio and podcast interviews for both businesses 2) Get bloggers to write about them; 3) Identify speaking opportunities; 4) Provide content to external sites that will create back links; and 5) Maximize earned media. All these goals were reasonable – except his budget had only enough in it to pursue only one of these goals, not all five of them.

·        Are you realistic in terms of outcomes? You may have a great announcement but the media and those on social media may not be able to write about it. A reporter once turned down a story about a $30 investment round because he had declined to cover a larger round that had been announced the week before.

3.      Can you be a thought leader? To be successful and to engage with current and prospective customers on social media, you need to continually develop new content on topics relevant to your customers. You can use these pieces to show that you understand your customers’ pain points and can help them address them. These thought leadership pieces don’t have to be white papers and case studies – they can be 300-word articles. But it is important to make sure these pieces are useful and not all about you.

4.      Even if you don’t have the budget yet, plan for marketing integration. That means, make sure whoever is writing your thought leadership content also knows what your keywords are. Make sure your sales keeps you informed about key trends affecting your customers as well as customer wins and milestones – those are things that can be turned into articles and press releases. Make sure whoever is handling your social media is aware of what everyone else is doing – they can post content about your latest article or case study, about your trade show booth or speaking opportunity or sales promotion. Even at small startups, it’s interesting how many of those activities are kept in separate in a silo. But you can generate much more traction if you leverage all the sales and marketing efforts your undertaking. And, if you’re not investing in all these tactics yet, that’s okay; just keep them in mind for when you do.

5.      When focusing on social media, keep in mind: clients don’t like to be marketed to. So make sure only one in 10 posts is a true marketing post – the rest can be about your industry, your region, but especially about your clients pain points as well as about your company’s personality and values. More than ever, people want to do business with companies they like, and social media is a great way to create and enhance your company’s personality.

Track Record of Our 2014 Predictions, Part II: Media & Social Media Trends

The first set of trends we'll review are: Media & Social Media Trends

• The media business has not stabilized.  Unfortunately we got this right. The New York Times just completed a buyout program of 100 newsroom employees that saw some prominent reporters like Stuart Elliott, a leading advertising columnist, and Bill Carter, author of several best sellers about the TV industry, leave the Grey Lady. Yet the Times claims that it still has approximately the same number of newsroom employees – just different mix of skills. Grade: A

• Journalists continue to use social media to announce and report – and broadcast reporters often recap the mood on Twitter. Reporting on what celebrities are Tweeting about a news incident is not, by our definition, news but we’re seeing a lot of that on broadcast news, even online – when, if I want to see what at celeb is Tweeting, I can go right to that celeb’s Twitter ID. Grade: A

• Traditional media will be burned in 2014 by jumping on a social media trending topic. This feels true even though we can’t point to a specific episode. Grade: B

• Native advertising will be big in 2014. Clickbait or Native Advertising is a big deal in 2014. A lot of people don’t seem to like it but it seems like it’s here to stay for the near future. Grade: A

• Marketing via flash mobs will seem so 2009. We were right about this.  Grade: A

• Instagram and Pinterest will remain important sources for recommendations and inspiration.

o  Neither site was dethroned in 2014 but Tinder may have captured the prize for generating the most buzz in 2014. Grade: A because we were right about the importance of Instagram and Pinterest as well as a growing awareness that there is a disparity between what people post and the lives we actually live, and that marketers need to make sure they develop easy-to-capture-and-share content, particularly with regard to video and still photography.

Stay tuned for a report on Marketing Trends, tomorrow.

Top 7 Things to Understand about Magazines' Lists

If the age of social media and native advertising has taught us anything, it's that people love lists: 

• "15 ways to waste more time on the Internet."
• "10 useless facts that will bore your friends at cocktail parties."
• "10 secrets to reduce procrastination." 

Those aren't real lists but they aren't so far off from native advertising articles (my favorite native ad headline of the day: "Warren Buffett Tells You How to Turn $40 Into $10 Million." Native ads are so prevalent, that The Onion recently launched a spinoff site called Clickhole that serves up faux native ad-like headlines and stories. The main problem is that the blurred line between Clickhole stories and real, unironic native ads.)

No business publication "gets" the importance of lists than Forbes, which researches, compiles and publishes dozens of lists each year, beyond the iconic Forbes 400 of the wealthiest Americans (by which Forbes tends to mean U.S. citizens or residents).

Here's our own list based on Forbes' range of lists.

1. You can never have too many different flavors of lists. In addition to the Forbes 400, Forbes also publishes the Worlds Richest Billionaires issue; "Richest Families in the U.S."; as well as the "Best & Worst Cities for Jobs," "The Best Cities for Business"; "The World's Most Powerful Celebrities" and "The Top Earning Actors" and "The Highest Paid Athletes" and don't forget: "Superheroes of the Celeb 100" and the "Richest Fictional Characters." (Seriously -- Mr. Monopoly ranked #13.) Several lists seem like variations of another list; the most powerful celebs includes top earning actors and athletes.
2. Publishing lists as a slideshow can be great because each click improves the traffic counts on your website. Instead of printing the top 10 of a list on one page, which generates only one click, slides of the top 10 whatevers generates 10 clicks.
3. Lists work best when they are quantifiable, which is why Forbes allocates resources to compile these lists. But there is a lot that can be hard to pin down, even when it comes to net worth. A lot of other lists are subjective, even as they try to apply some framework to the list. For example, Forbes ranks author John Green at 79 on the Most Powerful List, with JK Rowling at 84 -- really? Perhaps it's a nuance of power, but I would think Rowling still has more "power" to get published and movies made than John Green (not to take away from Green) but perhaps Forbes has a different definition of "power."
4. Realize that most rankings are designed to generate a barroom discussion and are not scientific. Most rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. What stars earn each year can be variable, with payouts dependent on sponsorships and multi-album deals. Same for CEOs and stock options.  
5. Even if Forbes provides some quantifiable numbers, there's a lot of guesswork and sometimes those numbers don't really matter. On the "Most Powerful Celebrities" list, which looks at earnings, money rank, press rank and social rank, LeBron James is ranked number 2 (after Beyonce). But King James' scored 19 on the money rank and 22 on the social rank; his highest ranking was the press rank at 9 -- so how can Forbes justify his top-two ranking? Well Forbes adds a "cultural figure," which is not clearly defined.
6. There are always questionable selections. Some of the stars on the Most Powerful list certainly deserve to be there -- Beyonce, LeBron, Dr. Dre, Oprah, Ellen, Jay Z, people known by their first names. But some of the rankings are questionable: Does Floyd Mayweather belong at #7? Roger Federer at #16, the Eagles at #36, One Direction at #28, Justin Bieber at #33? That doesn't include some folks I haven't heard of (because that may say more about me than them). Then there are celebs who don't seem particularly powerful like Avicci (#47), Kate Upton (#94), Kaley Cuoco (#99) and therefore don't belong on the list at all.
7. The teams that compile these lists do not always read the rest of the magazine -- and vice versa. On the very next page of the printed edition, Forbes reported that Michael Jordan is now a billionaire.  Here's the news blurb in its entirety from Forbes' "Scorecard" column: "Jordan never retired. Still earning $90 million a year selling shoes, he ups his stake in the NBA Charlotte Hornets and becomes the first NBA star worth a billion." If I were compiling a list of "Most Powerful Celebrities," I would have included Michael Jordan.

I don't mean to pick on Forbes or that particular list. I like lists as much as the next person but at some point, most are subjective, and that's okay. Cases in point: People's "Most Beautiful" and "Sexiest Man Alive" lists, various magazine's Best (and Worst) Dressed lists, and hundreds more. I think it is helpful to understand how the lists are compiled and why publications rely on them as long as readers take most of them with a grain of salt.

Another 2 Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid with Social Media

Last week, I posted 5 Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid with Social Media. In conducting research on a client matter, I came across a 6th mistake.

And this is an important one, given summer-time internships.

• Don't let an intern handle your social media unsupervised. According to CIO magazine article, "Stupid User Tricks 7: True tales of extreme brain fail," a company allowed its summer intern have unsupervised access to the account and to the password. While the student worked at the company, he did not post anything inappropriate. But he did access the corporate Twitter account from his personal laptop at school. After he left, he (or his college roommate) continued to use his laptop to access and post to the company's Twitter account, this time with expletives.  The lesson: keep careful track of access and passwords to your social media account.
• Don't let staff leave before they provide all the usernames and passwords to corporate social media accounts. We've seen this happen just once before making sure we always ask in future situations.  Any marketing executive handling corporate social media accounts should make sure there are others within the company who have all the usernames and passwords in one place.  That way, in case something happens during a vacation or if the main social media person leaves, the company continues to control access to its social media assets. By the way, this can take some amount of follow-through. When a senior marketing executive recently left a client, we asked for all the social media information, including blog passwords, etc. He handed off everything -- or so we thought, except he (legitimately forgot the administrator's info for the company's LinkedIn page. We found this out while the former exec was on vacation between jobs, and was unreachable. It was possible for the company to work directly with LinkedIn to reset administrator access but it took up more of our time and more of the senior exec's boss' time than it needed to.  Lesson learned.

Five Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid with Social Media

Recently, a reporter asked for three tips small- and mid-sized businesses should avoid when using social media. Here are five suggestions of what to avoid:

• Don’t have a call-to-action in every post, Tweet, blog, or interaction. Social media is about helping customers and potential customers. Unlike in sales, the goal is not ABC (always be closing). It’s about always being helpful (ABH), a less-compelling or memorable acronym). Businesses can turn off those they’re always trying to close a deal via social media. Instead, make sure you’re addressing the needs of your customers and potential customers. Another good idea is to mix it up a bit, and occasionally post/discuss some topics that are not related to your business.
• Don’t expect social media to generate results faster than traditional media. Everyone hopes for a viral hit but they really are rare occurrences.  Instead, social media takes time – time to establish a voice and a point of view, time to establish credibility and a following, and time to establish which metrics make the most sense to track for your business. Instead, small businesses need to be patient as they nurture and engage with their communities.
• Don’t think that all social media is the same. Facebook operates differently from Twitter, which operates differently from LinkedIn, which operates differently from Google+, Pinterest or Instagram. There are similarities, to be sure, and it’s possible to post the same content across most of each social media site (for Pinterest and Instagram, you need visual content). But each social media site is like a different country, with different cultures and expectations – and just as you would localize your content when marketing to customers in England or Germany, you need to localize what you do for Facebook or LinkedIn.
• Don't forget that people other than close friends or customers are reading your tweets. Be careful of inside jokes or references that can be taken out of context. Keep in mind that your circle of friends may understand your jokes but they may not translate well on someone's Facebook wall.  Instead, make sure to write for people who don't necessarily know you. And before you hit post or publish, ask yourself, would I want this same comment to appear in the New York Times or Wall St. Journal? If not, don't publish it.
• Be careful in responding to perceived negative statements about your company or something related to your company. In some cases, the reaction to a customer's tweet has become the story.T here are some statements that are best left alone, otherwise you ignite the "Streisand effect," defined by Wikipedia as "a phenomenon on the Internet where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized. 

I know there are more -- let me know what social media mistakes business owners should avoid.

Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2013, Part I

We've been issuing annual predictions for more than a decade now. Our goal is to help our clients more effectively understand and engage on topics of interest for media and social media.

We will be rolling out our 2013 list of trends over the next two weeks. Here are the first few:

·         The story still matters.  Even in a communications age limited by Twitter to 140 characters, the story and messages continue to matter, and are an important part of how companies remain relevant.  But the impact of social media is that stories need to be told not just shorter but differently.  They need visuals (still photos and video); text alone isn't enough. They need to be more frequent; you can't issue marketing materials in Jan. and feel you're done for the year.  And the stories companies tell must be very customer focused and be easily shareable. And stories have to be about offering tips and lessons learned because social media is all about offering advice as a way to show a company's expertise.

·         Corporate values and personality matter. As a part of corporate branding, values have always mattered but corporate personality may not have been important. After all, the differences between Coke and Pepsi aren’t significant. The same is true for McDonald's and Burger King. But there is a difference between Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Google.  And that's certainly true of what otherwise might seem like commoditzed sectors; insurance branding in advertising seems to be all about each company's personality -- you don't need to be a psychologist to grasp the differences between Geico, Progressive, All-State and Liberty Mutual (Disclosure: we have done project work for Liberty Mutual). And in 2013 and beyond, social media will multiply the impact of values and corporate personality. Companies need to be prepared to communicate not just their selling proposition but also their values and personality as they engage with customers via social media. (Be prepared for a lot of companies to try to appear edgy...even if they're not.)

·         Social media is relevant for B2B companies. In 2013, it's not only B2C companies that need a social media strategy; B2B companies will need one, too, because it should be clear to them that their customers are online, whether as part of their personal or professional lives. Social media isn’t about telling your friends about what you're having for lunch or sharing the latest LOL cats clip (or, at least, not only about that). It is where people go to get and share information. B2B companies that have been reluctant to engage on social media need to realize that social media provides them with the opportunity to reach customers in ways that ads in traditional print publications are not doing -- and we think 2013 will be that year.

 
Let us know if you agree or disagree. And check back tomorrow for additional predictions.