MackCollier.com

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The future of marketing is in FEWER conversations

Yes I actually said something smart in #IMCChat last night, and yes I am proud of it 😉  We had a fabulous discussion last night during #IMCChat about marketing and connecting with customers.  We were discussing how a brand’s marketing improves as it better understands the customer.  The better understanding comes from connecting, which leads to the brand speaking in a language that more closely resembles that of the customer.

And as that happens, the brand’s marketing becomes more effective, and more efficient.  Both the brand and the customer begin to understand the other a bit better, and at some point, that leads to trust.  Which helps move the customer to being an advocate for the brand.

To me, this is huge.  This is what brands should be aspiring to, to better understand their customers through connecting to them directly.  And this also explains why so many people are so excited about social media, because it gives brands online tools to do exactly that.  It’s not that the social media tools themselves are amazing, its the CONNECTIONS that the tools help facilitate.

But when you say ‘If you connect directly with your customers and better understand them, your marketing improves as does your number of advocates’, for a lot of marketers they don’t really ‘get’ why that’s a big deal.  It doesn’t blow their skirt up.

But if you tweak the metaphor and say ‘If your brand is a rockstar, by connecting with them directly and improving your marketing by better understanding them, you can have more of these….

…then the thought resonates more with marketers.  And if you could say that Marketing is the language a brand has to speak because it doesn’t understand the language of its customers, I think you could also say that rockstars have so many fans because they usually speak in the same voice as their fans.  That’s the true power of rockstars and the branding lesson for marketers: Rockstars have the same, or at least a very similar, conversation that their fans are having.  And this is because they are CONNECTED to their fans.  Not only are they connected, but for the most part rockstars seek out and thrive off connecting with their fans.

Now a few brands are able to do this as well.  Think of Harley-Davidson, for example.  Both the brand, and the customers are having the same conversation.  For HD, it’s not about purchasing a motorcycle, it’s about your lifestyle and how you use the motorcycle to connect with others around shared interests, and HD customers feel the same way.  In both cases the internal conversation the brand has about itself, and the external conversation the customers have about the brand, are closely aligned.  This is a big reason why Harley-Davidson has so many passionate advocates, and ironically, is viewed as being a Rockstar brand.

What are your thoughts on improving marketing?  Do you agree that by better connecting with customers that you’ll better understand them and move customers to become more like fans?  Does the Rockstar metaphor as it applies to branding and marketing work for you?

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Live #Blogchat Sponsorship Packages

 

Amy and Victor Canada talking with @Zaneology as C.C. Chapman and Julien Smith look on during meet and greet prior to start of Live #Blogchat at SXSWi

If you would like to learn more about sponsoring a Live #Blogchat, including what’s offered and pricing, please email me.

If you are active on Twitter, then you’ve probably heard of, if not participated in #Blogchat.  #Blogchat is the largest weekly chat on Twitter, happening every Sunday night at 8pm Central.  Every week we discuss a different blogging topic, and #Blogchat attracts as many as 1,000 participants and up to 5,000 tweets in a 60 minute period.

As the popularity of #Blogchat on Twitter grew, it seemed a natural fit to test the waters and try to take #Blogchat offline and do it ‘Live’.  The first Live #Blogchat happened in March at South By Southwest.  You can read my review of the event here, but let me say the response blew me away.  The power of the Live #Blogchat was that it brought people together and let them connect with each other.  This is the one thing that most event organizers miss when they plan events: Attendees usually learn the most when you let them connect with the speakers, and each other.  #Blogchat creates a vehicle that naturally facilitates discussion and interaction, and that what fosters learning.  It’s a huge reason why #Blogchat on Twitter is so popular, and it was also a big reason why the first Live #Blogchat event at SXSW was so successful.

So why should you want to sponsor a Live #Blogchat?  Here’s a few reasons why:

  • Minimum of 2 hours exposure with some of the true leaders in the social media space.  For example, over 60 social media influencers and thought leaders attended the 1st Live #Blogchat at SXSW, including C.C. Chapman, Shannon Paul, Becky McCray,  Jason Falls, Julien Smith, Chris Heuer, Richard Binhammer, Lionel Menchaca, Valeria Maltoni, Connie Reece and many more.
  • I will be promoting the event and your sponsorship on Twitter and my blog leading up to the event.
  • You’ll get a TON of useful advice from some of the smartest minds in social media.  This alone would pay for the sponsorship.
  • Sponsoring the event would bring a good deal of positive exposure to the sponsor.
  • Will work with the sponsor(s) to help them facilitate any blogger/influencer outreach programs with #Blogchat attendees and/or product giveaways or discounts.

A Live #Blogchat will be a 2-hour event.  The first hour is a ‘meet and greet’ where attendees and sponsors can connect with each other.  The hour will conclude with a brief introduction by the sponsors, and then the official #Blogchat will begin in the 2nd hour.

So if you would like to sponsor at Live #Blogchat, here are the available sponsorship packages and what’s included:

Platinum Sponsorship:

  • Naming rights for the Live #Blogchat.  For example: “Live #Blogchat Presented By Your Company”
  • Sponsor will be promoted on Twitter as the Live #Blogchat Platinum sponsor. The sponsor will be promoted on Twitter a minimum of 3 times a week prior to the week of the Live #Blogchat.  The week of the Live #Blogchat the sponsor will be promoted once a day, then twice the day before the Live #Blogchat, followed by three tweets on the day of the sponsor’s #Blogchat.  The Platinum sponsor will receive a minimum of 10 tweets promoting its Platinum sponsorship #Blogchat from the @MackCollier Twitter account, with total impressions from these tweets topping 250,000.
  • A blog post promoting the Live #Blogchat and mentioning all sponsors will appear on MackCollier.com the week of the Live #Blogchat.  MackCollier.com’s current monthly readership is over 100,000.
  • A banner (up to 200X200 pixels) will be placed at the TOP of the further right sidebar on MackCollier.com.  This banner will link to the Platinum sponsor’s website or blog (sponsor’s choice), and will appear from Sunday 12am-Saturday midnight the week of the sponsor’s Live #Blogchat.
  • Sponsor will be given a follow-up 30 minute phone call to discuss that sponsored Live #Blogchat, and/or any social media issues the sponsor would like to address.  This could include advice on social media strategy, implementation, etc.
  • Platinum sponsor will be given a chance to introduce themselves immediately prior to the start of the Live #Blogchat, at approximately 5 mins before it starts.

Gold Sponsorship:

  • Will be identified as the sponsor for the Live #Blogchat Meet and Greet to be held one hour prior to the actual Live #Blogchat.
  • Sponsor will be promoted on Twitter as the Live #Blogchat Gold sponsor. The sponsor will be promoted on Twitter a minimum of 4 times in the week of the Live #Blogchat, and at least once the day of the Live #Blogchat, with total impressions from these tweets topping 100,000.
  • A blog post promoting the Live #Blogchat and mentioning all sponsors will appear on MackCollier.com the week of the Live #Blogchat.  MackCollier.com’s current monthly readership is over 100,000.
  • Sponsor will be given a follow-up 30 minute phone call to discuss that sponsored Live #Blogchat, and/or any social media issues the sponsor would like to address.  This could include advice on social media strategy, implementation, etc.

 

A word to event planners and conference organizers:

If you already have a conference or event planned, adding a Live #Blogchat is a wonderful addition to your agenda.  The format of the Live #Blogchat is a roomwide discussion and interaction for one hour on a chosen blog topic.  This is NOT like your standard conference session where one person speaks and then answers 2-3 questions at the end.  The discussion is led by the ENTIRE room.  Which means everyone is learning and engaged.  What I’ve learned from attending social media and marketing conferences over the past few years is that attendees learn more when they are engaged, and they are more likely to be engaged when they are active.  That’s why sessions billed as ‘Core Conversations’ have become so popular, because the attendees are engaged and interacting from the moment the session starts.  Live #Blogchat is formatted in this exact same way, which is why it’s so popular with those that attend.

If you have an event that you’d like to bring a Live #Blogchat to, please email me so we can discuss how to make that happen.

Also, I am happy to talk to you about creating a custom sponsorship package for a Live #Blogchat event.  Or maybe you are interested in one of the above packages, but want to know if it would be possible to edit or alter some of the parameters of that package.  Please email me and we’ll discuss your options!

PS: Here’s where you can see more pictures from the first Live #Blogchat at SXSW.

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Your blog should be a passion project

I just saw a new post by someone on Facebook.  My first thought was ‘I need to read this because I haven’t shared any of their posts in a while’.  So I clicked over and read the post, but I quickly saw that the post wasn’t worth sharing.  It was short, and it covered a topic that everyone had blogged about, and brought nothing new to the topic.

The blogger had phoned in this post.

It happens sometimes, I do it as well.  I will think ‘I need to get a blog post up today’, and then looking back I realize that particular post shouldn’t have been published.

I was thinking about this after I read Lisa’s post today about her 1st year of blogging.  Lisa said “I chose the (blogging) path that had my name on it”.  Isn’t that wonderful?  By writing in her voice and being true to herself, Lisa is making her blog a passion project.  And it makes her blog more interesting to her readers, and the writing process more enjoyable for her.  It’s the difference between ‘ugh…I need to write something today’, and having something to write about.

This sage advice dovetails with something that Liz Strauss told me a few weeks ago.  We were talking about self-promotion and using your blog as a tool to promote yourself.  Liz said “There’s a difference between self-promotion, and sharing what you are passionate about”.  The enormity of that hit me right between the eyes.  Because when you are sharing your passion, it’s really NOT promotion.  You are sharing something you love with others.

Think about how this could impact your business blog.  What if changing your focus took your blog from being a place where you promoted your business, to one where you shared what you loved about your business?  Think about if Steve Jobs blogged, do you think he would post boring self-promotional brochureware posts about the next iPad?  Or would he blog ‘The iPad3 is the most amazing device you have ever seen, and here’s why!’

I think passion trumps promotion every time.  What do you think?

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Why setting realistic goals for your blog is so important

Several years ago when Technorati was still the rage, I used this trick to discover interesting new bloggers.  I would do a search by authority (which at the time was the number of links a blog had), and then sort in ascending order, so that the blogs with 0 authority would be shown first.  Normally, these were the bloggers that had just started blogging, and this method really helped me discover bloggers before the they became popular.

One day I found a blog that had really low authority, and it had about 2 months worth of posts.  I noticed for the first couple of weeks, there was a new post almost every day.  All very thoughtful, well-written (and lengthy!) posts.  But I noticed that none of them had comments.  For the next two week’s worth of posts, there was about 2-3 posts a week, then after that the frequency gradually fell to once a week, then once every couple of weeks.  All posts were well-written, interesting and thoughful reads.  And none of them had the first comment.

Then I noticed the newest post on the blog, which was over a month old.  In contrast to the other posts, this one was only one sentence long.  It read “Why doesn’t anyone comment on this blog?!?”

I realized that I had just seen this blog die.

When it comes to having a successful blog, realistic goals are so important.  Because your blog will only grow if you can commit to it, and you probably won’t be able to meet that commitment unless you can see that you are making headway.  And that starts with setting realistic goals that you have a chance of achieving.

If you are considering launching a blog, here’s some tips to make sure you are setting realistic goals for your blog:

1 – Underestimate how much content you can create.  For example, if you *think* you/your team can write 3 new posts a week, start out with 1 or 2 a week, and see if you can work up to 3.  It’s FAR easier to work up than it is to go back down.

2 – Underestimate how much time you can spend with blogging activities.  If you *think* you can spend 2 hours a day, then half that to only spend an hour a day.  And half that again to devote 30 mins a day to activities on the blog (such as writing posts, responding to comments) and 30 mins a day to reading other blogs and commenting on other blogs.  Maybe you can up that commitment over time, but it’s better to start low and go high, than to start out too high and have to back down.

3 – Think months, not weeks when you are timelining your blogging strategy.  Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.  You have to remember that a lot of the ‘pro bloggers’ that have very successful and vibrant blogs are NOT in the same situation you are.  For many of these people, their blog represents the majority of their sales and promotional efforts.  As such, they can afford to devote the several hours a day that it usually takes to create an extremely popular and productive blog.  You probably cannot, so you shouldn’t compare yourself to these bloggers and look for similar results.  If you can only invest 30 mins a day to your blogging efforts that’s fine, just understand that it will take longer to see that blog gain traction if that’s the case.

 

Those are some quick tips to get you started setting your blogging goals, for those of you that blog for your company, what has worked for you?

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Participation is no longer an option

Although he didn’t realize it at the time, this gentleman was actually live-tweeting the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad a couple of days ago.

Twitter ‘broke’ the news that Bin Laden was dead late last night, before mainstream media did.  As @ReallyVirtual’s tweets show above, the information was actually out there a couple of days earlier.  The lesson for mainstream media is the same as it is for your company: Anyone with access to the proper devices can use social media to create and distribute content faster than you can.

The days of creating and distributing a carefully-crafted message via only the channels you select, are over.  Mainstream media, to its credit, is realizing this, and is using social media to supplement its efforts and improve how it delivers news, and incorporates reactions from others.

Today, your business is no different.  You have to make the choice to begin to participate, or to begin to become irrelevant.  But thankfully, the choice is still yours to make.

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LiveFyre comment management added, let me know what you think!

As some of you have discovered, I’ve added the LiveFyre comment management system here at MackCollier.com.  This comes after seeing both Gini and Beth add it to their blogs, and rave about how it works.  Also, I was really sold after seeing how Gini’s readers (she’s been using it for about 7 months now) love it.

The Livefyre system will make it easier to facilitate actual conversations in the comments.  When I set up this blog I specified to have comments be nested, but it doesn’t always work.  Livefyre should take care of that problem.

Also, it adds a Like button to comments, which is great and most of us are used to seeing this on other blogs and Facebook.  And speaking of Facebook, you can also post your comment directly to Facebook AND Twitter when you leave it.

I really am excited about this system, and I am only adding it because I think it will help you.  So please try it out, kick the tires, and let me know what you think.  If you hate it, it will be gone.  If you love it, it will never leave.  The heart of this blog has ALWAYS been your comments.  Anything I can do to make it easier and more valuable for you to leave comments, is what I want.

So give it a try, and let me know what you think!  Also, here is Gini’s review of LiveFyre.

Oh and PS: Jenna Langer is head of Community for LiveFyre, and she was kind enough to attend the Live #Blogchat at SXSW!  Thanks Jenna!

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Which Fast-Food Brand Has the Best Twitter Presence?

So when it comes to fast-food chains, who is the King on Twitter?  McDonald’s? BK?  Starbucks?

The answer is, it depends.  Do you place more value on followers, or engagement?  How important is following back customers on Twitter?  Do more active accounts get higher marks?

I found a list of the Top 10 fast-food brands according to QSRMagazine and then used TweetStats to track the Twitter account for each of the Top 10 brands.  I then looked at 6 categories: Followers, Following, Tweets, Replies, RTs as Replies, and How Long on Twitter.

Here’s the brands that I looked at, and their Twitter account for each:  McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Wendy’s, Starbucks, Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts, Pizza Hut, KFC, Sonic.

Here’s my assessment of how these brands are using Twitter:

Best Twitter Presence – Starbucks

Starbucks leads 2 of the 6 categories I looked at, and was 2nd in 3 others.  The Seattle-based brand has a huge lead in number of followers, Taco Bell and McDonalds were tied for 2nd on the list with just a shade over 123K followers for each.  Starbucks has over 1.4 million followers.  They also have the most tweets, have been on Twitter since August 2008), and almost 80% of the company’s tweets are replies to others.  If there was one knock against the company, it might be that they are only following 79K people, which is the most on the list, but still only a fraction of its 1.4M followers.

Most Active and Engaged: Dunkin Donuts

DD has been on Twitter since October 2008, having left the most tweets on this list (8586), and 70% of those tweets have been replies to others.  Also, they have over 78K followers, and have over 52K people they are following.  I also think it’s interesting that while DD only has a fraction of the followers that competitor Starbucks has, the rest of its stats seem to closely track with what Starbucks has done.  DD joined Twitter a couple of months after SBUX, they have more tweets, and over 70% replies, like Starbucks.

Most Disappointing Twitter Presence: Burger King

BK arguably has the most brand awareness after McDonalds, but you couldn’t tell it from the company’s Twitter account.  The chain has less than 10K followers, a full 114K behind rival McDonalds.  Of course, The King isn’t doing himself any favors, only following 327 people, with only 223 tweets and roughly 1% of those are replies.  This proves that engagement matters, if BK were more active and responsive to followers, I bet its number of followers would spike.

Here’s the complete stats and how each brand ranked:

Number of Followers:

1 – Starbucks – 1,429,917

2 – McDonalds – 123,690

3 – Taco Bell – 123,557

4 – Dunkin Donuts – 78,449

5 – Pizza Hut – 53,306

6 – Subway – 47,821

7 – KFC – 32,808

8 – Wendy’s – 18,821

9 – Sonic – 12,144

10 – Burger King – 9,523

Replies as % of Tweets

1 – Sonic – 86.11

2 – Starbucks – 78.43

3 – Dunkin Donuts – 70.42

4 – KFC – 64.08

5 – McDonalds – 59.69

6 – Pizza Hut – 57.26

7 – Wendy’s – 53.52

8 – Subway – 45

9 – Taco Bell – 12.55

10 – Burger King – 1.79

Number of Tweets

1 – Dunkin Donuts – 8,586

2 – Starbucks – 6,936

3 – McDonalds – 4,946

4 – Taco Bell – 4,251

5 – Sonic – 4,243

6 – Subway – 3,824

7 – KFC – 3,044

8 – Pizza Hut – 2,047

9 – Wendy’s – 1,779

10 – Burger King – 223

 

Takeaways from these stats:

1 – Engagement matters, and isn’t optional.  All of these chains (with the possible exception of Sonic) have national footprints, and as such have to be on Twitter, because that’s where their customers are.  If you’re a national brand with a larger customer base (especially a B2C company), then it’s required that you be active on all major social media channels, because your customers will be.

2 –  Experience matters.  Three of the 10 brands listed here have been on Twitter since 2008, and all three are in the middle or top of all stats.

3 – Social Media is growing up fast.  If you look at the Twitter accounts of these brands, you’ll see that most are actively engaging their customers.  Remember just 2-3 years ago when it was big news if ANY brand replied to a customer on Twitter?  It’s the norm now.

 

Have any of these brands connected with you on Twitter?

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Blogging Case Study: How the OpenHouse Blog Builds Engagement With Readers

One of the biggest problems that business blogs (and many personal blogs, for that matter) have is building engagement with its readers.  Today I wanted to highlight a blog that does a fantastic job of connecting with readers, the HomeGoods OpenHouse blog.

It starts with the strategy

First, the OpenHouse blog does such a good job of building engagement because it’s a focal point of the blog’s strategy.  “The strategy for HG Openhouse is for our most passionate customers to talk to other customers about the love for their homes and surroundings whether that is in the form of decorating, entertaining, organizing, gifting, etc”, explains HomeGoods’ Marketing Manager, Kristie Rogers.  “We want the bloggers to talk about what inspires them and how they make their home their happy place.”

homegoods, blog engagement, blog marketing

Note in this screenshot that you can see the pictures of three different bloggers.  The entire visual component of the blog is build around making you as comfortable as possible with the bloggers themselves.  All have their pictures posted in each post they write, and rotating on the sidebar to the right, as well.  HomeGoods wants you to get to know the OpenHouse bloggers as people, and truly understand the value of posting pictures of their bloggers.  They also make it very easy to click the bios of the bloggers and learn more about them as people.  All of this makes it easier for the readers to connect with the bloggers, which makes it more likely that they will comment on the blog.

And when readers do comment (almost every post has comments), note how the OpenHouse bloggers make a point of referring to the commenter by their first name.  Here’s a good example, note that in both the comments Cathy wrote, she referred to the commenter by their first name.  And note that Sandy picked up on this, and referred to Cathy by her first name in her comment back.  The comments begin to look less like comments, and more like letters that friends are writing to each other.

So if you are wanting to get more engagement on your blog, look at what is working for OpenHouse on its blog; Lots of pictures and bios for every blogger, encouraging interaction and comments in the posts, and referring to commenters by their first name.  All of this works together to help HomeGoods reach its blogging goal of creating interaction with its readers.

BTW this is the first in a series of posts I’ll be doing on company blogs. I’m looking for company blogs that excel in one particular area.  For example in this post, the OpenHouse blog excels at creating engagement on its blog, so that’s why it was highlighted.  If you have a favorite company blog that you would like to see me highlight next, please either leave a comment, or email me.  Also, if you think your own company blog would be a good candidate, please send me a link so I can check it out!

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Coca-Cola’s CMO talks about how the company’s marketing approach is changing

Joe Tripodi, Coca-Cola’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer, recently penned a great article for the HBR on how the brand’s marketing is shifting from impressions to expressions.  I wanted to focus on one point that Joe made:

Build a process that shares successes and failures quickly throughout your company.Increasing consumer expressions requires many experiments, and some will fail. Build a pipeline so you can quickly replicate your successes in other markets and share the lessons from any failures. For example, our “Happiness Machine” video was a hit on YouTube so we turned it into a TV commercial, and we’ve replicated that low-cost, viral concept in other markets.

This is vitally important, especially when you are dealing with emerging marketing areas such as social media and mobile, and within big brands.  I recently wrote about the need to facilitate feedback internally AND externally (and among both groups), and I think this is an area that brands that have more mature social media marketing efforts will definitely capitalize on.  One of the big ‘knocks’ against social media especially is that it’s said to take a lot of time to implement and execute properly.  To Joe’s point, if a feedback system/cycle is put in place internally, the outcomes discovered by one area of the company, can be shared throughout, so that there’s no need to constantly re-invent the wheel.

Check out Joe’s article, and here’s the tv commercial that resulted from the success of their YouTube spots.

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Recruiters: Should job applicants mention using Social Media?

As you might know, Beth Harte has been looking for a job for the past few months.  Recently, she shared this feedback she had gotten from a recruiter:

“Remove all of your personal speaking, writing, blogging, and social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare links, etc.) items from your resume. Companies don’t give a crap about that, they only care what you will do for them. Those items are red flags letting them know that you’ll request to be out of the office speaking or on Twitter all day and that you will not be helping to solve their day-to-day problems (i.e. tactical work).”

What do you think of this advice?  And I especially want to hear from recruiters, feel free to email me if you don’t want to comment here, and I will be happy to post your thoughts anonymously.  I am sure that most of us in the ‘social media fishbowl’ will gasp at this advice, but I would really like to see if this is the advice that recruiters are giving job applicants.

Now if Beth were 21 and fresh out of college and her only social media experience was creating a Facebook profile where she shared her photos of shoe shopping and frat parties, then yes, I could see not mentioning that.  But Beth has active social media presences on Twitter, Facebook, her blog, that all work to establish Beth’s thought leadership when it comes to how businesses can leverage integrated marketing, social media, customer service, etc etc.  Also, the fact that she has over 20K followers speaks volumes to her ability to build online communities.

But anyway, I wanted to ask recruiters if this is solid advice for job applicants.  Should any job applicants be removing all social media activity from their resumes?  And those of you that are also applying for jobs, what feedback are you getting from recruiters?  As I told Beth, I can understand the recruiter saying she shouldn’t mention her speaking, but the removal of all social media activities floors me.  I don’t think it should be the focus of her resume, but I also don’t think it should be deleted completely.

Recruiters, what do you think?  Job applicants, what advice are recruiters and employers giving you about listing social media on your resume?  And BTW, I don’t care what any recruiter says, if you need a smart marketer, you should definitely hire Beth!

 

UPDATE:  We’ve had a few recruiters chime in with comments (Thanks guys!), and they seem to be agreeing with what the recruiter told Beth.  I am wondering if part of it is simply social media having a negative perception as being only personal content?  Beth creates business-oriented content on her blog and Twitter feed, so I would think that would have value for businesses that need someone who can connect with these same people.

So to ask a slightly different question to recruiters:  If Beth didn’t have ANY social media accounts/presences, but did have a business newsletter that was aimed at CMOs and brand managers that had 50,000 subscribers, should she mention that on her resume?