What Was Your #FirstTweet?…Celebrate Twitter’s 8th Birthday and Find Out!

March 20, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

As Twitter celebrate’s it’s 8th birthday today, they’ve enabled a quick way to take their users back to their first tweets. Twitter launched this website today

I’m breathing a sigh of my relief that my wasn’t totally awful.

Remember to check out your first tweet and share online using #FirstTweet. With over 100k tweets within the first day of launch, this campaign looks to be a total home run for the Twitter team!

Enjoy the trip down memory lane…

Do You Have a Strategy for Responding to Negative Social Media Posts?

March 15, 2014March 15, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

Earlier this month eMarketer posted a great article, Are You Still Missing a Strategy for Negative Social Posts? where they shared that most marketers respond within a day to negative posts. A staggering 88% of employees will use social media for marketing in 2014 however many still have trouble identifying ROI, but also responding to the negative buzz from the posts. At my current company we’ve had several instances where negative buzz has surfaced online, and we’ve had to quickly escalate to the proper internal resources to mitigate the situation. In responding quickly, we’ve turned online “ranters” to evangelists within a matter of days by promptly and effectively listening and responding to the issue at hand.

So what about the rest of you, are you responding online to negative posts? the Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) found that fewer than half of US marketing professionals had an effective plan for dealing with negative posts. The slide below shows the breakdown of where the marketing professionals align when asked in February 2014.

On top of having a strategy it’s impressive that 52% of marketers respond to a customer complaint on social media within 24 hours, and 18% respond within 1 hour. Click to Tweet this stat. A staggering 1 in 5 respondents said they rarely or never respond to negative social buzz altogether.

Do you have a strategy for responding to negative social media promotions online? If you don’t have a plan in place, I suggest you brainstorm and discuss one immediately. Connecting and engaging with clients and fans is a great way to deepen trust and loyalty while showing the human side of your brand. No one’s perfect, and mistakes happen and often customers can get upset and complain. With the growth and ease of social media networks customers now expect to log, share, and get resolutions through social media.

I’m curious to know how your brand deals with negative comments, and if you’ve got a strategy in place. Please comment below, log your vote in the poll, or tweet me @MarissaPick.

Five Simple Rules for B2B Social Media Marketing Success

February 28, 2014February 28, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

Inspired by a slideshare posted by Natascha Thomson, The 10 Rules of B2B Social Media Marketing, I wanted to share my top five rules for B2B Social Media Marketing Success. Let me know if you agree, or what rules you follow by tweeting me @MarissaPick.

#1: BREAK THE RULES AND HAVE FUN!

Social media provides a way for marketers to test the waters and try something new. Social media is an exciting and new space to experiment, and see major returns. Break the rules, have a little fun, and as a brand let your corporate hair down. Social media gives a behind the scenes look into a person or brand, and can help to facilitate deeper engagement with your audience.

#2: KNOWING WHAT TO DO IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT NOT TO DO

Every social media campaign needs a strategy, and it’s crucial to understand your goals. Knowing what you want to accomplish and how you will measure success is crucial before you launch any campaign. All social media platforms are not the same, so leveraging the proper channels, and having a way to measure your campaign is so very important, and sadly often over looked. Think strategically and decide what you’re going to do before you launch, and start small, you can always expand once you have results.

#3: SOCIAL MEDIA ACTUALLY WORKS!

Natascha shared a great statistic from Forrester Research within her SlideShare deck, “85% of business decision-‐makers said at least one social media channel is important when making technology purchase decisions.” Social Media has the power to influence the decision makers. When leveraged properly social media channels are a great place to share content to help influence and drive decision making at the very early stages. Make sure you have solid content which targets and engages with your audience.

#4: ENGAGEMENT = ESSENTIAL

Social Media is a platform to drive conversation and any post should always focus around engagement. It doesn’t matter if you have 20,000 or 200 followers, what matters is that you have a captive and engaged audience. I find visual content works well for my account to drive the RTs, Likes, and Shares.
Quick Tip: Find a quote or stat and download the Quoter App. It’s a great tool to brighten up your content, and quickly share on social media. I shared the quote below from MarketingProfs Ann Handley during the recent NYC Social Media Week. Since posting this to my account it has generated 45 ReTweets and 38 Favorites making this one of my most popular posts to date

#5: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Why should your audience follow you, and what’s in it for them? You need to answer this question, and them means the people within your social media community. It’s crucial to wear their hats and build content which excites, engages, and motivates your audience. Know your audience’s needs, and be the source they go to get information and content. This takes me back to the top rule, always have fun and mix it up!

2014 #SuperBowl MVP: The #EsuranceSave30 campaign and the brillant use of #SocialMedia

February 3, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

During the 2014 Super Bowl I gathered with friends for a relaxing evening of football, wings, and of course watching the new and expensive super bowl ads! Thoroughly under impressed with this year’s game as well as the ad’s the Esurance commercial which ran immediately after the Super Bowl ended was a breath of fresh air.

The ad featured actor John Krasinski telling viewer’s how Esurance saved 1.5 million dollars by running the ad after the game ended. In order to pass on the savings, Esurance will be sharing the $1.5 million (the 30% discount the company saved by running the ad after the game) with one lucky winner who enters the contents simply by tweeting with hash tag #EsuranceSave30. Krasinski will be reveling the winner of the $1.5 million dollars on Jimmy Kimmel Live this upcoming Wednesday after the contest’s 36 hour period runs out. Genius.

This is one of the simplest uses of a hash tag to drive social media engagement both online and offline. Why do I love this campaign so much? For the below five reasons:

1) Since this ad aired under 24 hours ago, it’s received more than 2.1 million tweets using the hash tag for the campaign #esurancesave30. Talk about some serious online buzz.

2) 200,000 of the tweets for the campaign came within the first minute of the ad airing. Some serious instantaneous ROI and Interest!

3) The campaign as of this morning has received over 1 billion impressions. Showing not only that the online world reacted immediately, but people shared, followed, and engaged hoping to be the big winner. (i’m equally guilty for my shameless tweet)..

4) The @esurance twitter account has received a massive bump in followers, since the commercial aired the account has increased its follower count by over 90,000! With thousands of Retweets & Favorites on each post the account has some serious engagement going on with it’s end users.

5) It’s a short, sweet, and effective campaign successfully tapping into the 61% of Super Bowl Viewers who share ads on
social media (Source:Mashable). It drove discussion online, and will most likely drive a bump in viewers tuning into Jimmy Kimmel this week as Krasinski announces the winner.

Wishing everyone good luck in claiming the $1.5 million, and a big vitual high five to @Esurance for an effective digital and social ad! Well done #EsuranceSave30

Please Support the Friends of Zachary Fund

January 26, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

I wanted to take a moment and remind everyone that life can change in the blink of an eye. Zachary Bernstein, my colleague’s son was diagnosed last May (at the age of 10) with an inoperable brain tumor, and unfortunately the prognosis is terminal. Zachary is fighting as hard as he can and has the overwhelming love and support of great parents and an incredible community. His family has setup a blog here to share his journey battling cancer, where you can follow along updates.

No child should have to go through what Zachary is going through. Please visit

Ten Tips for Using Social Media to Further Your Career

January 16, 2014January 19, 2014 / marissapick / 1 Comment

Ten Tips for Using Social Media to Further Your Career

It’s no surprise that as we enter into 2014 we’ve seen a social media explosion. Now there’s over 800 million people connecting with each other on social media networks including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and many more. I had the privilege of joining Sarah Lawrence, senior associate, DLA Piper; Lucy McNulty, managing editor, IFLR; and Callum Sinclair, partner, DLA Piper on a webcast run by International Financial Law Review (IFLR) and sponsored by DLA Piper on using social media to further your career. This webcast was the first in IFLR’s Women in Business Law Group’s webinar series. We each explained our experience and insights into how the rise of social media has fundamentally changed, and how we each communicate within our professional worlds. At the bottom of this post is the slide share of the powerpoint deck we used during our presentation, and if you would like to access and listen to the webinar broadcast please visit this link.

During the Q&A portion of the webcast, one of the questions directed to me focused on best practice for the use of social media platforms. Below are my top ten tips for utilizing social media to advance your reputation and further your career..

Stand out within your social media profiles. On twitter you have only 140 characters to tell the world who you are, so make your profile catchy and interesting. Although this seems basic, many profiles across social media are missing photos, contact information, and other crucial data. Highlighting your interest, job duties, location and other keywords helps people find out more about you. In addition, consider cross promoting your other social media platforms as well to boost your digital footprint. If you want to be taken seriously online, including a link within your profile is encouraged; for example feature your LinkedIn profile within your twitter bio to make easy for people to connect with you.
Lock It Down. What happens online doesn’t stay online. We live in a world within limited privacy, so as your setting up your social media profiles make sure to check your privacy settings and ensure they’re set properly. As employees we are a representation of the company which employs us, so remember to think before you post, or you can be held liable.
Transparency is key in building and maintaining a strong reputation. Be honest, respectful, and mindful across all social media platforms. It’s important to be open and transparent, this makes people relate to you. It’s important to align your online persona with your offline personalty to avoid trouble.
Content is King. The key to any social media strategy whether you’re trying to advance your career or increase your businesses visibility should focus around a solid content marketing plan. What you share across social media platforms should be interesting and engaging for others to enjoy, read, and share. All social media platforms are not a one size fits all model, it’s important to craft posts for each social networks to maximize and leverage content. As a reminder content doesn’t always have to be original. Test quotes, statistics, and visual content and images across social media and see what works best.
Incorporate Images. Visual social marketing is the next generation of social media. 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visually based, and the human brains processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Utilize social media tools Instagram & Vine which let you embed posts and videos easily, and use free apps like Quoter which provide ready to go quotes, or let quickly create a visual image. Mix it up and create content that is visually pleasing and easily shareable.
Become an authority and add value. Choose a focus, and share information relevant to your niche career area. Join LinkedIn groups, start discussions and comment on existing discussions, find and engage within Twitter chats, and most importantly always add value. As you engage more within social media you will gain the trust of others who will follow you to find information. As you focus and carve our a niche area, you will build trust, and people will begin to share your content and come to you for advice.
Establish Yourself Offline. Establishing yourself as a brand both online and offline allows people to put a face to your name. Nothing takes the place of face to face interaction, so ideally building a strong online presence can translate to building a stronger and larger network of offline connections.
Stay up on Digital Trends: Demonstrating your proficiency with all things digital shows you’re up on digital trends, which are currently affecting every company. Employers are increasingly looking for social media and digital proficiency in potential employees.
Make time. Social Media is easy, but it does take time, carve out an hour a week at a minimum to go in spend within social media platforms. Setting up a social media profile is a great first step, but as with anything else it takes time and a comfort level to become successful. If you’re going to let your platforms sit and never update them, why bother even setting up a profile?
Have Fun. Social Media is a great place to have fun and let your corporate hair down. Whether your using social media to advance your career, or build your business remember to utilize your profiles as an avenue to have fun!

Please share your feedback below in the comments section, or tweet me @MarissaPick.

2014 New Year’s Resolutions, Reflections, and Objectives.

January 3, 2014January 3, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert wrote a great post for the Washington Post titled, “Read this if you want to be happy in 2014.” Within the article he outlined a very basic principle, Happiness = Health + Freedom. Scott reminds us that there’s’es a right time and a wrong time for almost every activity from sleep, paying bills, and more. It’s crucial to match your mood to your activity as a basic requirement to happiness, and equally important to remember that timing is controllable, especially in the long run. The article goes on to outline some of his goals and obstacles, and gives important insight into the power of your mind in making things happen.

Forbes contributor Cheryl Conner wrote a fantastic post titled, “Mentally Strong People: The 13 Things They Avoid.” She included a list compiled by Amy Morin which was shared in LifeHack and reflected on her list including her thoughts on how the items were applicable to entrepreneurs. The 13 reflections touch power, change, success, and so much more with fantastic insights from Cheryl and Amy.

I’ve done a lot of thinking and reflecting upon my 2014 New Year’s Resolutions. The two fantastic articles above from the Washington Post and Forbes helped me craft my below post and insight, I hope you enjoy!

1) Expand upon Scott’s reflections and work on finding a better life & work balance to focus & attain the formula: Happiness =Health + Freedom. We all struggle with finding a balance for everyday life, and we have to really prioritize and focus on what’s important, for me I know where I need to focus, and sometime unplug, so i will work to create more a life balance into 2014.

2) Become more adaptable to change: Cheryl nailed it within the Forbes article saying that mentally strong people embrace change and welcome the challenge. The biggest “fear” if they have one, is not of the unknown, but of becoming complacent and stagnant. I need to become more adaptable and take more chances and accept change to further succeed within my work and personal life.

3) Make mistakes & learn: In December, my company held a offsite meeting in London to cover 2013 reflections to help plan for 2014. One of my colleagues brought up an important point, in order to learn we need to make mistakes and reflect and learn from them. We can’t measure our successes without assessing our failures as well.

4) Dwell on the Past: We all know the saying forgive and forget, well easier said then done. There is a positive when acknowledging the past and learning from experiences, but we must focus on living in the moment and creating the present and future.

5) Embrace alone time: I’ve really cherished the day’s in 2013 I was able to work from home and enjoy the quiet, meeting-free days. I’ve learned to embrace the time I spend alone both within work and personal life. I’ve been able to reflect, plan, and be productive and I find my alone time to spark some of my most creative ideas.

“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.” —Brad Paisley

What are your 2014 resolutions? Please comment below or tweet me @MarissaPick

#SocialMedia, It’s not easy, but it is simple.

December 23, 2013December 23, 2013 / marissapick / 10 Comments

In under a decade, Social Media has become a mainstream channel for consumers. My colleague Anna Lee and I have complied some stats to sway you, and we’ve also shared the below article with Online Marketing Institute as well. We would love to hear your feedback and experiences, please leave a comment below or tweet us @marissapick or @annaleenyc.

72% of adult internet users in the U.S. are now active on at least one social network, up from 67% in 2012 and just 8% in 2005. (Source: MediaPost) [Tweet This]

As marketers, we must embrace the change and explore this new & exciting channel for communication with our customers. Simply put, if you’re not embracing social media, you’re missing out.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”- George Bernard Shaw [Tweet This]

For some, this change can be overwhelming, time consuming, fast paced and scary. Whilst it’s true that you must invest in this change, with the same time and care you invest in traditional marketing channels, the bottom line we often overlook is simplicity.

Social media is simply a new channel for communication with your audience that ultimately can compliment your existing marketing mix. It’s a place to listen, to learn, to inform, to help and to engage.

The exact same principles you apply to more traditional channels apply to Social Media too.

Send the right message, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Marketing 101, right?

The Right Message
Earn the attention of your audience. Provide valuable content. Be Helpful. Solve Problems. Engage.

54% of B2B marketers plan to increase spending on content marketing in 2014. (Source: MyCustomer.com) [Tweet This]

The Right People
Social Media is not a mass marketing channel. In fact, I can’t think of one that is. Use hashtags, targeted ads and social media tools to laser in on your audience. Think your audience isn’t on social media? Think again.

In fact, the 55-64 age group is the fastest growing demographic on Twitter — at 79% since 2012. (Source: Jeff Bullas) [Tweet This]

The Right Place
You don’t have to be on all Social Media channels, but you do have to be where your audience is.

Approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision. (Source: Nielsen) [Tweet This]

The Right Time
Is your brand prepared to be spontaneous? Be timely. Respond quickly. Leverage trends and current affairs.

More than 70% of users expect to hear back from the brand they’re interacting with on Twitter, and 53% want a response within the hour. (Source: Search Engine Watch) [Tweet This]

Make sure your brand is ready to send the right message, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Our audience is embracing social media. Are you?