social media Tag

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Sees Value In Brilliant Jerks; image credit: internet meme featuring photo by Scott Grummett for Wired Magazine… LinkedIn’s wall is degenerating fast. It used to focus on careers and business discussions. Now it’s becoming Facebook, complete with inspirational quotes. For example, my LinkedIn wall frequently features this popular meme about Neflix CEO Reed Hastings, who has built a mighty empire. As a Netflix customer, I respect a lot of what Hastings has accomplished — but I don’t necessarily thinkRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Marketing Communication Professor… Add another voice to the growing chorus of marketers stating the inconvenient truth — a truth that social media cheerleaders still refuse to acknowledge: When it comes to marketing brands, organic social media is a colossal waste of time.Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + #Strategist… One hashtag, three problems… The other night I asked 50 marketing students what the Twitter hashtag #unstoppable represented. Some guessed it was for a movie. Others thought it was for a car company. None guessed the reality: it was for a Mexican tourism campaign — even the students from Mexico didn’t know about it. After I revealed the connection, the students still didn’t understand it until I explained it was about Los Cabo’s recovery from a hurricane. Finally, a searchRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who’s Happy He’s Not On The Job Market… I keep my eyes open for job openings that I can pass on to my students, but too often I encounter ads that get my eyes rolling. The job requirements are so excessive and irrational, not even a combo of Chuck Norris and the Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man In The World could fulfill them. So I’ve started a new feature on my blog called “Stupid Job Ad.” For now, I’ve decidedRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Member of Too Many Social Networks… Apparently, the leading social networks have given up on innovation. Now they just gaze covetously at each other’s “best practices.”Read More

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Wears Out His Credit Cards Too Soon… I dig my American Express card. Really. It enables me to buy pallets of cat litter at Costco, which won’t accept any credit card except AmEx. It extends warranties, so when my MacBook fried after the initial warranty expired (how predictable), AmEx paid for the repair. And when it comes to online security, I trust no card more than AmEx. So why’d they have to go treat me like a 13-year-old?Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who’s Given Up Drinking Milk (And Kool-Aid)… “How to Build a Multi-Million Dollar Ecommerce Business With $0 Marketing Budget” No, that’s not the subject line of an email in your spam box. That’s the actual headline of a “case study” on Black Milk Clothing, as published on the Shopify blog.Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who’s Extremely Allergic To Snake Oil; featured photo by Mister Serum via Wikimedia Commons… “Snake oil” originally described the fake medicine that con men sold across 19th century America. The worthless ointments and lotions supposedly cured everything from basic pains to baldness, when the only thing they consistently cured was “heavy wallet syndrome.” Scientific American describes how these faux experts worked:  “…the ‘doctor’ was aided by a shill in the crowd who would, at the appropriate moment, call out thatRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Questions the Answers… A recent class discussion brought up one of my core tenets: the need to question everything in the market. We were discussing Charity: Water, a nonprofit that achieved near celebrity status because of its use of social media and videos: Great ad, right? When asked to analyze why the video worked, a student described it as “authentic” and “transparent” — two clichés now so overused, misused, and abused that they no longer have meaning. Analysts needRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Certified Non-Celebrity… Why do 60% of Twitter users quit within the first month? You could blame the inane trending topics, like these… #LightSkinGirlsDoStuffLike #ShorterThanBeyoncesHair Miley Cyrus #ThanksMiley #confessyourunpopularopinion Each trend is based on hundreds of tweets. Kind of makes your cerebrum cringe, doesn’t it? That said, lobotomizing trends aren’t the primary reason people become Qwitters — in fact, they’re part of the social network’s attraction. (Tell me again how social media will advance civilization.) No, people quit because they see NORead More