Online Marketing Blog

At the recent Online Marketing Summit in San Diego I caught up with Charlotte Blank, Manager of Social Media at General Motors to talk about digital marketing.  In this short interview I asked Charlotte a few fundamental questions about digital and social media marketing related to customers:

1. How does GM segment digital marketing activities between customer acquisition and retention?

Follow up: Does GM follow a social media editorial calendar according to customer buying cycles and personas?

2. With all the shiny objects of social media in the world, how do you go about deciding what to test and what to implement?

Take a look at the video and I think you’ll be interested in the customer-centric approach GM takes with social media and how time is allocated towards new customers, activating current customers as evangelists and their approach to filtering shiny social objects.

Does your business need better content marketing like this Social Media Examiner contest participant?

In 2009 Michael Stelzner (@mike_stelzner) decided to run an experiment.  He wanted to see if he could repeat his previous success in a new industry.  That experiment led to the launch of Social Media Examiner in October of that same year.  Michael had been well known in the whitepaper industry and joked “I went from the king of whitepapers to the joker of social media.”

I really appreciated Michael’s insight into today’s customers and the need for change in an industry that is constantly evolving.  Below I’ve provided some highlights from what I learned from Michael Stelzner at the 2012 Online Marketing Summit.

If you are part of the online marketing or content marketing industry you have undoubtably heard of Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) and his company the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).  Joe has been a member of the content marketing community for over a decade, and has made it his mission to help brands create quality content and distribute that content through multiple online channels.   This was my first time seeing Joe speak and he made it a great interactive experience, and was of course wearing his trademark Orange.

I enjoyed the history that Joe shared with the audience as well as his practical tactical tips that can be implemented by an organization of any size.  However, I think the true takeaway is determining a way to differentiate yourself from your peers and your competition.