Oliver Blanchard has led a pretty interesting life. He served in the French Fusiliers before moving to the US and working with a variety of B2B and B2C Fortune 500 companies and SMBs.
He’s currently runs BrandBuilder Marketing and functions as senior strategist. He helps companies develop, build, integrate, manage and measure social media programs.
He also helps corporations with reputation management both online and off.
Oliver will be one of the keynote speakers at The Fusion Marketing Experience on March 23rd in Brussels. He’s got a lot of interesting and provocative things to say, even his blog’s bio page get’s rave comments and that’s gotta say something special about him.
Here’s an excerpt from one of Oliver’s many insightful posts:
“If you are using social media channels for “marketing” and mostly for campaigns, no wonder you aren’t getting any concrete results: You are doing the same old stuff that already was working marginally well five years ago, only it has been repackaged to sound hip with the times and include a few more channels. That’s it. The only problem is this: You aren’t doing “social.” You are still basically just creating content, pushing it out to potential customers, and hoping they will bite.
And that is why you are getting nowhere in social media, no matter how many people click “follow” or “like” on your stuff.
Fact: Calling “marketing” by another name or adding “social media” to it won’t change what it is: Marketing. Just because your ad agency’s digital department has rebranded itself a “social media” department doesn’t mean anything has changed or improved. Same products and services, different skin. That’s it. Don’t limit yourself to that. If you want to make social media work for your organization, think beyond marketing. Think beyond campaigns. See the whole field.
By the way, if you are gauging success by measuring retweets, followers, shares and “likes,” I guess you also gauge success by measuring website hits, right? Same deal. Same ridiculous, empty, diversionary metrics that mean absolutely nothing. People clicking on buttons on the internet is about as valuable to your business as counting how many cars drive by your office every day.”
Read the full post:
Social Media For Business: Taking Your Program Beyond Marketing Campaigns
I know everyone says this when promoting an event, but The Fusion Marketing Experience is not the same old show. We’re going to get in the kitchen with marketing thought leaders who know how to cook and know how to make you think. We’re going to shake some spice and bang some pots & pans to make some noise! And it’s all going to be served up really hot!
No velvet rope or podium! You’ll be in the kitchen interacting too — bring your chef hat.