Chris Brogan
Social media expert and best-selling author Chris Brogan built a career on observing how the latest trends and tools in Web networking are changing the nature of business and entrepreneurship. In his 2009 New York Times Best-Seller, Trust Agents, Brogan explains how business owners can convey their message more powerfully than any public relations firm or big corporate relations department. He is president of New Marketing Labs LLC, a social media marketing agency, and co-founder of PodCamp, a nonprofit community that hosts free PodCamps across the country and internationally for social media enthusiasts, professionals and novices alike. Follow Chris Brogan: On Twitter | On the web
Posts by Chris Brogan
- Brogan: Building an Online Presence
Chris BroganA hundred years ago, we did our business face to face. Someone came along and invented the telephone, and I imagine there were a bunch of people out there offering courses and speeches about how selling over the phone was the next big thing. You can almost hear the business owners: “Pshaw! Talk on the phone? That’s madness! We do business face to face.”
Here we are again. The social Web and the Internet are the new phone. You know how to build business in the offline world, but feel a bit thwarted by the online version. Let’s talk about building an online presence so that you can start taking advantage of opportunities when you see them.
A Website Is a Great StartAs we said in Your First Moves in Social Media, a website acts as your…
- Brogan: Outposts and Home Bases
Chris BroganIf you think of your main website as your home base (be that a blog or a shopping site or a corporate site) and if you think of all the social networks as outposts, then you’re halfway to understanding one of the best ways to market online, in my not-so-humble estimation. The trick is this: knowing when to engage on the outpost and knowing when to drive people back to the home base.
The Old Days and Home BasesIn Web 1.0, it was all about getting people back to your site. Please click the banner. Please fill out the form. Please do something to give me more traffic at my primary website.
If you think about it, the real-world equivalent would be requiring you to drive to Japan to check out which TV you wanted, versus just popping into the local BestBuy.
That was the old days.
Outposts and Why They MatterI spend a lot of my online time on places like Twitter and LinkedIn…
- Brogan: Use Your Voice
Chris BroganBefore I was a blogger, I was an employee. After I became a blogger, I was someone with an opinion. I was a writer. I was a publisher. I was a business. In a word, learning how to use my voice set me free in ways that continue to expand and provide opportunity for me every day.
Your Voice as GatejumperOn September 4, musician Kanye West decided to use Twitter to talk about his year-old outburst at the MTV music awards, wherein which he interrupted the process of Taylor Swift receiving an award. One could say that it was the worst move of West’s career, and that he’s felt the financial, the social, and other repercussions ever since. He went to Twitter because he felt he’d been censored and advised against and otherwise hampered in his efforts to communicate. Here’s a rather salient tweet from his stream on that day…
- Brogan: Hamburgers in Milwaukee
Chris BroganWe often think of social media as one of two things: something kids do or something for big companies. If we’ve heard about people using social media, it’s either something from a news story about a teen bullying another teen or it’s hearing how JetBlue uses Twitter to improve customer service. The thing is, more and more people are finding success stories in social media. For instance, let’s talk about a hamburger restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Joe Sorge runs AJ Bombers, a place I had the pleasure of visiting last winter after Joe reached out to me via Twitter. (To be fair, Scott Baitinger of Streetza Pizza also reached out, but because my belly wanted burgers more than pizza, Joe gets the story.) He made a simple offer. Hungry? Swing by @AJBombers and try out a Barrie burger…
- Connect: Networks Matter
Chris BroganMy coworker, Colin Bower, has a problem that I’m fairly sure you’ve never faced. Last year his children were abducted by his ex-wife and taken to Egypt against his will. It’s been over a year that Colin has been working on getting his kids back. And how will he do it? Using a network.
So far, every bit of success we’ve had in moving the story forward has come through our networks, which were built via years and years of relationship building and development. We had access to the Vice President of the United States, several media people inside big networks like NBC, CNN and USA Today, and several other business and industry leaders, all via our work on social networks.
If that’s too obtuse, how about the world of job searching?…
- Hotels in Manhattan: A Study in Success
Chris BroganIn February, 2009, I asked people on Twitter where the cool kids were staying in New York City these days (rumor has it that there are more than one hotel there). The first person to answer me was Chris Kieff. The second to answer me was Brett Petersel from Mashable. The third person to answer me was the Roger Smith Hotel, who said I should drop by—they have a blogger’s special.
And so began one of my favorite case studies in the use of listening tools in social media, and part of the reason I shared the importance of growing bigger ears with you. Let me explain what happened.
Listening for BusinessBrian Simpson and Adam Wallace work for an interesting man. James Knowles never does things by half measures, and he’s all about the creative experiment. One of these experiments was listening to a guy who helped run the restaurant and a young dreamer, and to let them start using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to promote the hotel…
- Listen: The Importance of Bigger Ears
Chris BroganThe most powerful tool in social media is listening. I say this because at the same time you’re thinking about how to engage in all this new stuff, people out there are pushing commentary all over the place about what they like and don’t like about your product, your competitor’s product, their needs. They’re screaming out with opportunities for you to solve, and all you have to do is listen, process what you’ve heard, and engage with them in a reasonable way. It’s the closest thing to printing money that I can tell you about.
- Brogan: Your First Moves in Social Media
Chris BroganOkay, so you’ve decided I’m not crazy, and you’re going to try out some of this social media stuff. Where should you start? I’ve got some advice.
Grow Bigger EarsFirst and foremost, read this post about how to grow bigger ears. By that, I mean, create a free listening station. If you don’t start with listening, you’ll miss all the very best parts of social media: the serendipity and moments of “listening at the point of need,” as Radian6 CEO Marcel Lebrun calls it.
By that, I mean that people are talking about you, your brand, your company, or mentioning something they need help with that you can solve. Set up some listening tools to monitor for certain phrases and terms, and you’re on your way to finding opportunities that your competitors don’t even know exist…
- How Social Media Maps Into Your Marketing
Chris BroganWhether you’re a big company or a solo act, social media has become part of the marketing mix for most organizations. You might be skirting around the edges and wondering what to do. You might have a hunch that your buyers are on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or both, but how do you know? And how should you mix this in with your other marketing? Let’s cover that.
What Social Media Marketing Is NotFirst, realize that social media isn’t just a new channel to stuff old marketing down…
- Brogan: Why Social Media Aids Success
Chris BroganYou’re hearing about social media everywhere. First it was blogs. Now, you’re being told that you have to be on Facebook and Twitter and a whole bunch of other services that don’t exactly make immediate sense. Wasn’t LinkedIn supposed to be the one-stop business site of choice? What’s the answer? How can you use social media to improve your success?
- Social Media 101
Chris BroganIf you still call the Internet the “Information Superhighway,” you need to read this. Since the World Wide Web changed the way we work, play and socialize, a whole industry categorized as “social media” has emerged that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Social media expert and best-selling author Chris Brogan built a career on observing how the latest trends and tools in Web networking are changing the nature of business and entrepreneurship.
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