Author Archives: Jacob Morgan

by Jacob Morgan

Chess and social media actually have a lot in common. I am an avid chess player, and over the years have learned quite a lot from chess. So, I decided to put together a quick list of how social media (and in fact business in general) is similar to chess.

Patience

Those of you who have played chess untubtedly realize that you must have patience. You can’t move impulsively or you will blunder a piece and then lose the game. The same goes for social media. Creating a twitter profile or a facebook account does not guarantee that you are going to start seeing results overnight. You must be patient and persistent. Building relationships is not something that can be done overnight, but with the right strategy it is something that can be quite beneficial.

Thinking Creatively

Chess isn’t always about making a calculated move, oftentimes it’s about being creative. This means perhaps giving up a piece for an improved position or playing something unexpected an unusual. Oftentimes it’s the creative chess players that are considered to be the best. Social media definitely requires a very high degree of creativity. How are you going to reach your users? How are you going to make it easy for them to spread the word? Are you going to hold events, create social media profiles, announce giveaways? What type of creative ideas can you come up with that will help you build relationships?

Thinking Analytically

Not only is it important to think creatively, but it also important to think analytically. It’s important to analyze and interpret the information you are presented with. During a game a of chess you have to look at the current position and analyze the possible moves and variations, then you have to determine the best course of action. The same goes for social media. There are going to be several times during a social media campaign where you are going to be presented with situations that require analysis and action. Perhaps your campaign isn’t doing as well as you had hoped, what do you do next? If you are looking at various social media channels how do you determine which one is right for you?

Looking at the Big Picture (Holistic Thinking)

Every move you make in chess affects the overall game. You can never look at just one section of the chess board, you have to look at the board as a whole. You have to ask yourself, “how did that one move affect my overall position and my opponents position?” Chess is all about understanding how the individual moves can affect the overall play of the game. The same goes for social media. Sure you can create a facebook profile, a twitter account, and a linked page. But how do these individual platforms interact and work together? How is your twitter accounts working together with your facebook profile to better your position? How are all of your individual social media pieces working together to form your overall strategy?

It’s a Psychology Game

During a game of chess most of the losses occur because of a blunder you make that your opponent is then able to capitalize on. Blunders occur because of time trouble, stress, lack of concentration, etc. All of the errors occur because of mental processes that affect the physical outcome. Players try to stare each other down, make nonsensical moves to try to scare their opponent, etc. It’s all in your head. In creating a social media strategy it’s important to make sure your head is in the game and that you are also doing a good job of analyzing your users. You have to understand what the users is thinking; what does the user want? what does the user need? how are you going to give it to them?

Thanks for reading everyone

“When you see a good move, look for a better one”
~Emanuel Lasker

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by Jacob Morgan

That’s right folks, NASA will showing us live video from the Phoenix Mars Lander at 6:30 pm EDT, and 3:30 pm PDT today March 28th. The link to the live streaming NASA station can be found here.

All the information you need can be found by visiting the site above, along with television channels that will be covering the event. If you want even more excitement then I recommend following the Phoenix Mars Lander on twitter. NASA also did a great job putting together a video that explains what exactly they are hoping to do. I must say it is very impressive. I won’t ruin it here, check out the video!

It’s definitely exciting and great to see that NASA is using social media to reach out to everyone. I am very curious to see the viewership stats after the broadcast, both offline and online. There is definitely a lot of online conversation taking place on twitter. Using ‘Summize” and doing a search for Mars, you can see “Mars” seems to be the topic of conversation.

I hope all of you get a chance to watch it. I would love to read some of your thoughts and comments. I should be live on twitter during the landing and hope to chat with all of you!

“I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”

~Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001

by Jacob Morgan

There are multiple posts looming around the web glorifying and praising the use of social media. Granted social media can be a valuable relationship building tool, it is not for everyone. Social media is like a fine wine that needs to appreciated, analyzed, sniffed out, and not always swallowed. So what are some reasons that you shouldn’t get involved in social media?

Advertising

If your sole goal in participating in social media is to get access to as many “connections, followers, and friends” as you can so that you can barrage them with links to ads (or ads themselves) then you should not get involved in social media. Not only that but you should also find the nearest bamboo shoot and jam it in your eye…seriously. I know what you are thinking; perhaps that is a little harsh. Well that may be the case. Perhaps the social media advertiser is just a lost sole in need of guidance, in need of some sort of direction. That very well may be the case, if so, then by all means forgo the bamboo shoot and go do some social media homework, if however, if you are well aware of social media best practices and continue to advertise to the rest of us…well…bamboo for you.

Paying someone to be you

If your goal is to sign up for social media platforms in hopes of paying someone else to do the talking and friend adding for you, well then you have no soul. Social media is about building relationships, if you are not the one doing the relationship building, then what is the point? It is important to understand the most people who use social media are interested in genuine interaction with people; nobody wants to be tricked or bamboozled into interacting with someone that they are not. Think about it like this, you are going on a date with a very intelligent attractive man or woman. A few dates later you are really starting to connect with this person, all of a sudden you find out this person is not the sex you thought they were. You were lied to. Now you are angry, upset, and sad. You never want to see the person again, you hate them. Get the idea?

Using social media strictly for SEO a.k.a. SEOcial Media

Social media can be a great SEO strategy if it is a by-product and not a main goal. What do I mean by this? It is one thing to go onto a blog and post intelligent comments, interact with other users, and provide some sort of value. It is quite another thing to go onto a blog and post “hey check out my blog” along with a link. Most readers are very good at picking up non-genuine blog comments and eventually you will just damage your reputation. There is no point ranking number 1 on Google if you have a reputation for being a spammer and are disliked. I will admit that I have used social media for SEO purposes. I regularly post on several other blogs/sites but I do my best to post something intelligent, something that provides value. If you do a good job of writing quality content on other sites (and on yours) then people will begin linking to you on their own accord.

He who has the most connections wins

Have you ever asked yourself, “What’s the point of having 10,000+ twitter followers, 2,000+ linkedin connections, or 3,000+ facebook friends?” Seriously what’s the point? Now there is nothing wrong with having a lot of social media connections, but are you the one spending hours each day trying to follow as many people as you can on twitter so that they will follow you back? Are you adding random friend requests on facebook to boost your friend count? Why? I want to draw a very fine line here so that there is no confusion. This section refers to people who make it their mission to seek out and add as many contacts or friends as they can, so that they can either brag about it, spam everyone, sell their accounts, etc.

Sometimes we loose sight of the fact that social media is really relationship media. Social media can mean anything (a post on this later) but relationship media is about building actual connections that mean something, it’s about relationships. I send every new twitter follower I get a message thanking them for following me and saying that I hope to meet them OFFLINE, and I mean that. I actually want to meet my twitter followers because I am interested in building new relationships and learning from other people’s experiences (and stories). I only want people to connect with me if they are genuinely interested in me (or my work, writing, etc.) and I only want to connect with people that I am genuinely interested in.

“The glue that holds relationships together – including the relationship between the leader and the led is trust, and trust is based on integrity.”

~Brian Tracy

Hello, Ok, now that we’ve dispensed with the pleasantries, who the heck am I?  I am the CMO of a company I am launching in a few months (disclosed later), an online marketing consultant, and a creator of the Search Marketing Salon.  If you are really just dieing to know more about me than you can either google my name “jacob morgan” or visit my blog about page.  If you still want to know more about me, then perhaps you should buy me dinner and then take me out to a movie (a play would be better)…I’m no cheap date.

I suppose that’s not really who “I am” but more of what I do (don’t get me started on philosophy).  I am actually a dog lover, traveler, chess player, reader, idea lover, etc.  Don’t worry I’m sure we will get to know each other a bit more either in person (I live in San Francisco) or through social media (i.e. this blog, twitter, etc.).  Either way I’m looking forward to eventually meeting, debating, and speaking with all of you.

So what are my goals for writing here?  Well, I could sit here and write about how I want to be the best writer and how I want to try hard to make everyone like me, but quite frankly that’s cheesy and not true.  In fact I can’t say that I have any “goals” lined up at all.  I’m here to have fun, to learn, and to challenge all of you to think differently about and explore technology, marketing, and social media.   

I do know that I want to bring a bit of my personality and knowledge into everything I write about.  I want to spark some interesting discussions and debates as they pertain to tech/marketing/social media and I want you to call me out on things that you disagree with or think aren’t true.  That’s how we both learn so I welcome it!  Apart from that, I want to interract with all of you and get to know a bit more about you, not just online but OFFLINE as well.  I am fairly easy to get ahold of and I asure you I won’t fling obsenities at you if you contact me (will I?). 

So how do you get ahold of me?  

You may follow me on twitter (no I don’t just follow everyone that follows me)

You me contact me through my blog

You can connect with me on Linkedin

Or You can find me on facebook.

I look foroward to hearing from and meeting all of you! 

I leave you with this quote:

“Begin challenging your own assumptions.  Your assumptions are your windows on the world.  Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

~Alan Alda

by Jacob Morgan

We have all been giving twitter a lot of flack recently for their consistent down time and non-responsiveness (myself included). Despite twitter’s recent suffering and bashing I would like to commend them on something they did recently, or I should say, on something they posted recently.

Today twitter made an announcement on their blog, here is a brief snippet:

“We’ve gone through our various databases, caches, web servers, daemons, and despite some increased traffic activity across the board, all systems are running nominally. The truth is we’re not sure what’s happening. It seems to be occurring in-between these parts.”

So why I am giving kudos to twitter for this recent post on their blog? Because they followed several social media best practices.  Here is what Twitter did:

• Was honest with the users and blatantly stated that they are not sure what is causing the slow-downs
• Acknowledged that the last week has been rough for them and they are working on fixing the problem
• Is being transparent with how they are trying to resolve the issue and identify what the problems are
• Is taking the side of the user and is expressing gratitude for our continued usage and understanding
• Is letting us know that they are going to make changes in the future by providing users with great visibility into their system and into their roadmap

Great job twitter. It is never easy to accept criticisim and to openly admit when you don’t know something.  I only wish that other companies would be so forthright in their mistakes and so open and transparent in their communication methods.  I was getting quite furstrated with twitter but can safely say that thanks to their recent post, I will be sticking around through the tweet times and the bad and I hope you will too.

Oh my name is Jacob and I am a new contributing writer to Bubblicious!  I will introduce myself properly in an upcoming post