Three people you must read

Posted by Justin Goldsborough | 11 comments

Who are your #3PeopleYouMustRead? (Image credit: wickinv.blogspot.com)

I’ve always been afraid to meet a genie. Not because I don’t think I’d like a genie. I think I would. Especially that super-nice genie from the Aladdin movies. The one Robin Williams played. After all, genies seem pretty cool. They somehow work they their way in and out of those lamps. And they grant you three wishes, which is a heckuva nice gesture.

No, it isn’t genies themselves that scare me, but the prospect of picking my three wishes. See, I’m sort of indecisive. Ask me to pick something for dinner or choose a movie to watch and you could be in for a bit of a wait. Just ask my wife. But that said, my friend Kelly Crane had a cool idea the other day when she wrote a post recommending “three people you must read.” So I thought I’d give it a shot. Got to be ready when that genie comes some day, right?

Kelly’s #3PeopleYouMustRead were Valeria Maltoni, Jermiah Owyang and David Meerman Scott. Her reasoning was, “There are many people – too many to name – that are dubbed thought leaders in the social media space. But when you really look at what these leaders are saying, it can very often be traced back to a book, blog post, or report from Maltoni, Owyang and Scott.”

And therein lies the cool part of this idea. I read Valeria fairly often and Jermiah’s stuff now and then. But I haven’t read David Meerman Scott much…until now. After reading Kelly’s post the other day, I added him to my list. So now, time to pick my three. I know I’m going to leave out some super-awesome people who I’ve learned a ton from. So sorry, I owe you a beer . But the three that came to mind the more I thought about this were Gini Dietrich, Don Bartholomew and Ramon DeLeon.

Gini Dietrich

Gini blogs daily over at SpinSucks.com, which is a serious commitment. And it would be easy to take a day off literally, or figuratively, with the content she produces. But Gini never does. She always brings a passionate POV to the table on a relevant issue. I like a lot of things about her writing, but two things stand out that keep me coming back to Spin Sucks almost daily:

• Gini understands the “spin doctors” stereotype PR is dealing with and that our end goal should be to be seen as strategic business counselors. I like the fact that she always stands up for our industry and never backs down from tough PR conversations we must have to change perception.
• Her community of readers and commenters is like no other I have seen. If you were looking for an industry event or organization offline to attend, you’d try and find one full of interesting people, valuable conversation and abundant networking opportunities. Spin Sucks is the online equivalent. And Gini is always a part of the conversation after she posts. So the initial post is really just a conversation starter, which is what I think blogging should be.

Don Bartholomew.

Full disclosure…I work with Don at FH. And that’s probably the reason he’s on this list. While I’ve always learned a lot from his blog, Metrics Man, some of the conversation we’ve had about measurement recently have been the most eye-opening for me. Measurement and analytics is a tough topic for most communicators to wrap our heads around. But Don has created a model that makes it a lot easier for us — or at least, it has for me — to talk to leadership about measurement in a way they can understand. Here are some measurement best practices I’ve learned a lot about from Don:

• Barcelona Principles
• Social media measurement model of exposure, engagement influence and action
• ROI vs impact and aligning impact with business objectives and goals
• The AVEs debacle
• How to truly measure influence and the role of influence tools

We all need a go to source when it comes to measurement, and Don is a good place to start. I also want to throw a shout out to some other measurement minds I’ve learned from along the way — Chuck Hemann, Shonali Burke and Johna Burke.

Ramon DeLeon

I don’t think Ramon has a blog. Or if he does, I haven’t read it. But this Dominos Pizza franchisee - -the pizza guy to know in Chicago — is an absolute must follow on Twitter and any other social network where you can find him. And if you haven’t seen him present before, you are truly missing out. Ramon shared a quote the other day that may be my all-time favorite: “Your brand is what you customers say it is.” I could not agree more. And Ramon embraces that POV in everything he does. The guy is an absolute customer engagement machine. He is everywhere, online and offline, meeting new customers, talking to regulars, helping with customer service issues, showing his passion for pizza and people.

Often times we want to make communications and social media complicated. But if you hear it from Ramon, it’s really pretty simple. It’s about engaging with customers, making it easy for you to be found online and giving customers stories to tell about your brand. When the uber-gross Dominos video came out a couple of years back, Ramon was the only Dominos rep really talking to people about it via social media. And today, IMO, the company has wisely copied his example and created an entire integrated marketing campaign — the pizza turnaround — based on what Ramon does every day. He’s a real-time case study of how marketing and communications should be done in today’s social media world.

Well, that wasn’t so hard. Three amazing minds I try to learn from as often as possible. Who are your three?