zoë siskos

Mar 23

What I want to ask @GaryVee

“Be authentic. Be real. Stop tweeting on behalf of your client. Your client needs to care; you need to care.”

This was the first 15 min of @GaryVee‘s presentation at SXSW (for a fun account on the last 15min of his talk, click here). This is his mantra, his philosophy, his way of life. He didn’t become a social media consultant and then get famous. He ran a successful family business and made it more successful with social media…and then he became famous.

He’s different from all those other web celebrities because he actually DOES what he preaches; he did it for himself and he really believes in what he’s saying. He’s always upbeat, positive, caring, and genuine. yes, sometimes you may think he should be on Ritalin but we need people like Gary to inspire and motivate us. The best part about Gary is that he actually knows his shit.

At SXSW he ran his session in Q&A style but the line ups were so long that I never got the chance to ask him anything. But I know he’s online like 47 hours a day (yes, he some how makes that possible) so I’m hoping he catches a glimpse of this post and can answer the question that I’ve been dying to ask him. So, what do you ask the man that seems to know it all?

How do you put up with all the bull shit?

Allow me to give some context.

At his talk this lovely lady gets to the mic and professes her love for Gary. He is the bane of her existence and she owes everything to him.

She then proceeds to explain that she teaches social media and desperately wants to help these companies get it; it actually pains her, this need, this desire, to help them.

Gary thinks she’s trying to pitch him but she assures him she’s not. All she wants is for him to evaluate her idea, on how she is going to help companies use social media.

Now I’m paraphrasing, but her grand idea is to start a “We Tweet For You” website, where they will provide value based tweets for companies who don’t “get it”.

Now the reason I’m paraphrasing is bc as she’s talking Gary is interrupting her saying “I hate it. It sucks. No way.”

You may think this is rude. I think it’s awesome. It’s awesome because it’s honest.

I mean, here is this person, who proclaims her love for everything that is GaryVee, yet she has the balls to stand up in front of a thousand people and proclaim her complete ignorance to everything that he stands for.

So, my question to Gary – how do you put up with that bullshit?

How do you get by on the daily frustrations of people who completely ignore you, yet lay claim to your ideals. I feel like it’s an assault on your brand. Yet you remain so positive and grateful.

Mar 19

What is SocialTalk?

My Life, Social Media View Comments

This post is mostly for the benefit of my friends and family that don’t really know what I do. Let me be clear. Some days I’m not really sure what I do. But I always say that’s a good thing, and the moment I really know I get bored and then need to find a new job.

What can I say, I like to be challenged!

Anyway, if you’ve been following my tweets and Facebook you’ve probably heard a lot about SocialTalk and SXSW. SXSW stands for “South by South West” and is one of the largest film, interactive and movie conferences and it’s always held in Austin, Texas.

Our team went to the interactive portion, which is mostly social media based but really, anything computer, tech, or internet related, flies. They have a tons of panels (speakers) and a huge trade show area. It’s a gong show for information, education and promotion.

We were there promoting one of our products called SocialTalk. Watch this video first to give you an idea of what it is and then I’ll explain it more.

SocialTalk is a web-based software that helps large companies manage their social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, blogs, Twitter). There are a lot of free platforms that help single users do similar things (i.e. hootsuite) but they don’t really work when there are multiple people who maintain multiple platforms.

Think about this: Company A has 17 Facebook pages, 4 Twitter accounts and 6 blogs. That’s a lot to manage. On top of that, the people who write the posts are different from the people who create the photos, and are different from the people who approve the content and are different from the people who publish.

Trying to maintain any sense of sanity in this case is difficult without one system to manage it. Without a system in place, each person will have to sign in to each different platform, to create different posts and then email someone to sign in to check and approve it and then that person emails another person….you see my point? Not only is it frustrating but this method has way too much room for error.

Not only that, but SocialTalk allows you to schedule posts in advance. This is great for the company that has its headquarters in Toronto but wants to post things to coincide with their audience in Australia. It saves people from having to work crazy hours.

The best part (if I do say so myself) is the analytic portion. We have the ability to measure the success of each post you make and you can look at the results all within the SocialTalk app. (I get excited because Measurement Science is what I do).

So, I hope that’s clearer for you. Of course, if you have any questions please feel free to ask, though if they get really complex I may have to defer you to our product experts, because, well, they are the experts. Also, if you happen to be interested in a demo let me know and I can also help set that up for you.

In the meantime, I’ve uploaded a bunch of our photos while at SXSW to the Syncapse Facebook fan page, you can check them out here. And if you’re interested in staying on top of what we’re up to at Syncapse, I invite you to become a fan of the page.