If you're some kind of drunk hobo dressed up as an Elmo in Times Square of Hollywood, that's not really doing much for the Elmo brand, is it?

In December, UPS is scheduled to deliver 580 million packages in the United States alone. But I've noticed that during the month of December with all of these deliveries, the UPS branding goes out the window. they're using Budget rental trucks, their friend's pickup, or some other mode of delivery, and they're looking haggard and worn. 

Does it really benefit the company when you have so many customers or so many Elmos or so many non-Starbucks employees working at the airport Starbucks? 

Sometimes, the zest for growth actually hurts your customer experience because you are cobbling together a delivery strategy without the proper resources. 

I'm not certain that customer service and branding can survive being that busy and that big. What do you think?

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Lauren Teague (https://twitter.com/laurentee), formerly of the PGA Tour, is now working as part of the Convince & Convert team along with some of her other projects. So excited to have Lauren on the team. Learn more about us here: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/about-us/

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

Maybe hashtags are more trouble than they're worth.

There was a recent Twitter controversy in Indianapolis surrounding the protestors that were arrested for blocking traffic on Sunday night, and the Indianapolis newspaper had contacted me to see what I thought about it. 

You can read more about the situation here (http://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2014/12/05/critics-condemn-impd-wecanbreathe-tweet/19941857/), but in general, I've noticed that in a lot of cases when Twitter goes bad, its' because of the hashtag. It could be a simple typo or misunderstanding, or it could be a larger case of misused newsjacking.

We're addicted to speed and brevity now, but Twitter is already a short form social network site. Hashtags are like a shortcut within a shortcut. We need to be conscious of this and be extremely careful about how and when we use hashtags to avoid these kinds of issues.

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Mitch Joel (http://twitter.com/mitchjoel), a legendary digital marketing and one of the original marketing podcasters. His show, Six Pixels of Separation is worth checking out today - http://www.twistimage.com/tag/podcast

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

More than ever, businesses, especially big B2B companies, need to create content. And they're trying to find creative and interesting ways to create that content, oftentimes tapping into the knowledge of their own employees.

The problem they encounter is that the engineer or the artist or whoever holds the knowledge is not interested in writing a blog post or shooting a video for the company marketing efforts.

Instead of relying on them, worry about getting the content first, and worry about the format second.

Get the information out of the person's head however you can and then take that information to create content on your own. 

There's a company called Backbone Media that got people on the phone and interviewed them about 2015 trends. They then took those telephone interviews and created blog posts and videos out of them. This way, the people being interviewed didn't have to worry about writing anything or sending any tweets. All they had to do was get on the phone and talk for a couple minutes. 

Another example of this idea is what we do here with the Jay Today show. We create 8 pieces of content out of the Jay Today show, and I outlined our process on the Convince & Convert blog last week: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/how-to-make-8-pieces-of-content-from-1-piece-of-content/

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Amber Naslund (ambercadabra), co-author of The NOW Revolution, now works at Sysomos, and will be the co-host of a new podcast that we're launching called Content Pros. Stay tuned for the launch of that in January!

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

What's the point of accruing airline miles if you can't even use them?

If you've ever tried to use airline miles to book a flight, then you know how difficult it can be. But what if you were able to use airline miles for something other than air travel? 

United Airlines is partnering with their terminal in Newark to offer a new program where customers can use their United miles to pay for food and beverages. This sounds like a brilliant idea given the amount of miles that people have, but never get to spend. 

Now, if they could tie this into Apple Pay, I'd be all over it! 

Is there something else besides actual flights that you'd use airline miles to pay for? Let me know in the comments.

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Colin Haas (http://twitter.com/colinmhaas), who is the marketing manager for Paradox Creator, and is also one of the lead reviewers for MarketingPodcasts.com. Colin sent me these amazing cookies as a holiday gift, and they're some of the best food-related gifts I've ever had! Check out Carol's Cookies: http://www.carolscookies.com/

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

Just because something exists in popular culture, doesn't mean you have to use it as a platform for click-bait.

The new Hunger Games movie just came out last Friday (at the time this episode was recorded). And almost immediately after the film was released, people started writing articles about things like "what PR pros can learn about crisis management from the Hunger Games". 

Writing articles that tie into pop culture events doesn't build your thought leadership in the industry. In fact, I believe it does the opposite. Instead of trying to relate to what's happening in Hollywood, why not just write the post about what you actually know about your top tips for crisis communications? 

Everyone has written a blog post about pop culture (including me). But we have to draw the line somewhere, because trying to tie marketing and communications into pop culture events is ridiculous.

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Heather Whaling (http://twitter.com/prTini), a fantastic PR professional who has developed the public relations plan for MarketingPodcasts.com, my new project that helps you learn about the best marketing podcasts in the world. 

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

Why do people think it's okay to bribe their customers to talk about them in social media? 

There's a company down in SoHo that is offering a deal to its customers: If you mention them on Twitter, they will give you dollars off of your purchase. Customers will get $1 for every 500 followers they have up to $20. 

The company makes gourmet onesies for adults. Just because someone has 10,000 followers and the person tweets about it, doesn't mean the person is influential about onesies or even cares about them. It also doesn't mean that anything will listen to the person who mentions the company just because they talked about them on social.

Quit worrying about audience and start worrying about creating the kind of experience that people actually want to create content about. Give them something they care about and they'll go ahead and create social media content on their own because they want to. 

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goest to Ted Rubin (twitter.com/tedrubin), the co-author of Return on Relationship (http://www.amazon.com/Return-Relationship-Kathryn-Rose/dp/1622958209). I can't wait to see Ted's face when he hears about what this company is doing! 

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

Facebook already has all your free time. Will they get your business too?

Facebook recently announced that it is releasing a business tool that will allow companies and teams to communicate internally, share files, and exchange feedback. It will look like Facebook but will compete with Yammer and other internal communications tools. 

I would imagine that business professionals, and especially IT professionals, might feel dubious about giving Facebook even more of their personal information. Plus, there are already companies that are doing this, and doing a great job at it I might add. It's hard to know if this will catch on or if it will flop.

So, what do you think? Would YOU use Facebook for Business?

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Guy Kawasaki (https://twitter.com/guykawasaki), who is a brilliant social media marketer and Chief Evangelist at visual marketing tool, Canva. He and Peg Fitzpatrick are coming out with a new book called The Art of Social Media (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Social-Media-Power/dp/1591848075/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0) and they will also be guests on the Social Pros Podcast that airs this week. Check out SocialPros.com to listen tomorrow. 

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

After creating your online videos, are you putting them in the wrong place?

We talked about the success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge a few months ago and the small Facebook shift that helped make it so successful (watch that episode here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtUFA...).

Coupled with the auto play functionality from Facebook, new research from Business Insider has found that Facebook may be more engaging for audiences than YouTube. The example they showed was from a British company, whose latest video saw almost 40% of the total shares come from Facebook. Plus, among the people who watched the video on Facebook, the sharing ratio was 5%. Compare that to YouTube? Only 1%.

I can say first hand that we are seeing traction for the Jay Today show from Facebook. We put the show on YouTube, Facebook, and iTunes, and we're seeing more views and shares on Facebook than any other place. 

If I'm a brand now, and I have a short-form video like this one, I am most definitely putting my videos on YouTube AND Facebook.

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

DJ Waldow (http://twitter.com/djwaldow), who is starting a new business called Coach DJ. If you're thinking about making a career switch in the near future, talk to DJ - http://coach-dj.com. 

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

Are Amazon and Ali Baba going to dominate our lives in ways that Google and Apple never will? 

Amazon has introduced a new tool called Echo. It's basically Siri, but as a standalone device that's not connected to your phone. You can ask it for any information, like weather or sports scores, and you can also ask it for things like toilet paper and books. 

That's because it's connected to Amazon's e-commerce system, and I'd imagine more partnerships will be coming soon.

This is a very interesting and potentially scary development because it is taking our buying process from one click to zero clicks. Now, instead of going to the store or browsing online, all of our shopping can theoretically be done with our voice.

Commerce is ultimately the key to our hearts. Commerce is the killer app. And that's why Echo is going to change everything. Whoever controls commerce is going to control the household. 

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Chris Penn (http://twitter.com/cspenn), who is one of the smartest marketers in the business and, in my opinion, releases the best newsletter in the business every Sunday. Subscribe here: http://www.christopherspenn.com/newsletter/

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.

Are you putting all of your emphasis on social media measurement on exactly the wrong thing?

I recently did a webinar with social media management platform, Expion, about cross-channel analytics. Albert Chou, CIO of Expion, brought up a great point: We've got tons of social media measures of outputs, but we are not always measuring the input. 

Forget about how your social media activities perform for a minute. How much does it actually cost to *do* these social media activities? 

We can measure outputs very easily, but we almost never take the time measuring the inputs. Yet we cannot figure out ROI without knowing what the "I" is. If you take the time to do these calculations, your understanding of where you are in social media will be much more clear.

Expion.com will have the replay of the webinar soon, so check them out!

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00

SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT

Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Nick Cicero (http://twitter.com/nickcicero), a really smart marketer (who actually used to work at Expion) and is on the cutting edge of social media strategy. Fun fact about Nick: he's also a jazz trumpeter!

OUR SPONSORS

Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. 

Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter.

ABOUT JAY TODAY

Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.