Alan See

Let’s recognize that age has little to do with ability. You’re never too young or too old if you've got talent. In the marketing world, Advertising Age and Direct Marketing News have their 40 Under 40 lists. Forbes has their 30 Under 30. This blog post counterbalances with 50 who are over 50 because to my knowledge a list of this nature has never been published.

Now, before I present my 50 let me provide some background details. Yes, in case you are wondering, I am over 50, and this group was mainly pulled together through my personal Twitter followers. I’m currently ranked as the 3rd most followed Chief Marketing Officer on Twitter by...

In 1977 I failed my initial swimming test during Plebe Summer at the United States Naval Academy. During my remedial lessons with other sinkers I still remember my instructor yelling “Mr. See, you look like a sledge hammer going through butter!” My technique needed some help; my rhythm, timing and stroke rate were creating plenty of splashing but not much forward movement. If that continued I’d soon be exhausted and drown.

Today, I see a lot of social media activity that looks like a sledge hammer going through butter. Is your program one of them? In my opinion, here are a few elements of a social media sledge hammer at work:

1. Extreme cross linking automation: A tweet or post on one platform automatically sends the same message across several platforms. Yes, some automation can be helpful; but when you take it to the extreme it looks and feels like spam. If you want to...

Has rational ignorance impacted your organization’s social media activity yet? Rational ignorance is the decision not to become more informed about something because the perceived cost of the additional intelligence — in terms of both effort and expense — is more than the expected return on the knowledge gained.

It kicks in for most of us when we believe we have reached the point of diminishing returns in relation to the value of acquiring additional insight. More than likely, your organization started its social media journey with great excitement and a willingness to invest and learn. Now that the honeymoon is over, most of your staff missed the profile page changes on LinkedIn, and it’s been months since they tweeted.

The concept of rational ignorance, while popping up on a daily basis for most of us, is particularly consequential to a social media strategy because the social media ecosystem is still evolving at a rapid pace. In short, we now live in an age when...

Mistakes were made. We’ve heard that before – many times. The phrase first made famous by the Nixon administration was later used and re-used by many politicians – Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, to name a few. People generally aren’t fond of admitting their mistakes. I’m not. Businesses are the same. They don’t like to talk about their mistakes, certainly not publicly – but not even within company walls. How mistakes are handled within a business says a lot about the people who lead that organization. Are mistakes seen as something to hide, deflect or feel ashamed of.

Like them or not, mistakes are inevitable  – even the hardest working, most competent employees will make them. So what...