Meet the Author

The printing press changed the world. Then radio and TV did the same. Then the internet. Then mobile. You get the picture. Each of these innovations changed consumer behavior forever.

Voice technology is about to do the same.

For marketers, the holiday season is an insanely exciting (and stressful) time of year. We’re bringing our best ideas to life. We’re using all of the MarTech tools in our arsenal. Our media buys and targeting strategies are in full swing. We’re just waiting to crush our numbers and roll into the next year feeling like marketing heroes.

However, we have to remember that we’re really not that special. Every marketer is saturating every channel with their marketing and advertising campaigns.

The consumer, who holds all the power (and is getting blasted with marketing messages and ads across every possible place their eyes glance), doesn’t really think your Black Friday deal on light bulbs is really that special. 

October 8, 2008 seems like a lifetime ago. Obviously, a lot has changed since then. Our world is definitely different, but so is Nebo.

We’ve grown to nearly 100 people. We bought a smaller agency. We moved to a 14K square-foot space across the street from our old location. Kimm Lincoln became President. And the list could go on and on.

However, to me, that date stands out above all of the others.

You see, that’s the day Cami found Nebo.

It was a normal Friday. Rachel Thompson was driving home after a fairly intense week. Despite being exhausted from work and deep in thought, she was being an attentive driver.

Boom. A dog shot out in front of her car, and thanks to some fast reflexes and good driving skills, she narrowly avoided hitting it.

Now most people driving through a rough area of downtown Atlanta would simply be happy that they didn’t hit the puppy and keep going.

But Rachel is not most people.

Social media marketing is broken. It’s broken for several reasons. Some we can control. Many we can’t. The main challenge marketers have in creating a long-term, coherent social media marketing program is that the social landscape is chaos personified.

There are many drivers for this (and we explore those below), but chaos represents both opportunities and challenges. The first step is understanding why there is chaos. The next is understanding what we can control. The final step is creating a strategy to help navigate and thrive in the ever-changing social realm.

However, let’s start with some of the main reasons the social sphere is in disarray.