Insights from Nebo

We’re incredibly proud to announce that we’ve been honored with the Best Blog award by Ragan’s PR Daily!

It’s an amazing validation of our team’s hard work over the years.

See, when readers come to our blog, they just see a ton of great content (that's the hope, at least). But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes before we ever hit publish.

I recently received a thank you note that rubbed me the wrong way. It was from a job candidate I’d interviewed for a position at Nebo. The note could have been a nice gesture; however, I received it three weeks after the interview (and about three weeks after we made the no-go call). To make matters worse, the problems were plenty. There were spelling errors, it was sloppy and it reeked of desperation. The thank you note cemented my decision that this person was not right for our agency. But more than seal the deal on the decision, the card upset me personally because it felt so cheap and lazy.

Yet, I have to give credit when it’s due. At least the candidate wrote something.

The ChooseATL campaign started as a grassroots effort to change perceptions of our city. It was a completely volunteer-driven effort made up of several people that wanted to better tell Atlanta’s story. The original task force was comprised of the most talented people from Atlanta’s biggest brands, including other agencies, startup leaders, government representatives, non-profit partners and more.

The first phase was an incredible success. We drove more than 40 million media impressions, our social campaign led to thousands of photos and tweets shared using the #ChooseATL hashtag, and we even threw a flash-mob style lantern parade right in the heart of South by Southwest interactive.

But, one of the questions we’ve come across more recently was how will we build, grow and sustain this effort? Working with Metro Atlanta Chamber and their partners throughout the 29-county region of Atlanta – along with BBDO and Porter Novelli – we’re proud to announce the launch of the next phase of the campaign.

There’s an art to social media. You have to be purposeful. You have to be real. Which is why I’ve spent years shaping my Twitter presence. I’ve joined Twitter chats, tweeted interesting content and formed real relationships with real users.

But it was all destroyed in a blink of an eye.

It was April Fools Day. I logged on to Twitter, ready to continue improving my personal brand, when I noticed something strange. My follower count was growing. Not just by a few, but by thousands. Thousands of a new people were following me, and every single one was a spam account.

One of the best Moz Whiteboard Friday episodes ever features Rand Fishkin talking about content goals and how to map content to different phases of the buyer journey.

In it, one of the content phases he describes is what he calls “Viral” or “Super-broad”.

Music is one of the greatest miracles this world has ever seen.

Think about it for a moment: composition involves little more than organizing a specific set of frequencies within the right timing. Yet that simple framework gives way to an endless potential for creativity.

And people have taken to that potential like wildfire. Human history is filled with cultures pushing the proverbial envelope of creative expression. What we have today is the result of thousands of years of ingenuity. We live in the wake of the Beethovens, the Tchaikovskys, The Beach Boys and the millions of nameless musicians who have pioneered the way for modern music.

But, we also live in the wake of missteps and foregone creativity. With every moment of success comes the temptation to leave behind music’s long-standing tradition of innovation. Musicians rise to fame, genres splinter and we’re left with the nagging question of whether popular success is really the end-all-be-all of creative expression.

If we take a look at today’s world of pop music, I think the answer is pretty clear: it’s not.