Ahh yesss… the time of year is upon us when we list our New Year’s resolutions and promise ourselves we’ll do our very best to stick to every single one of them.  ‘Tis the season of self-improvement, fresh starts and clean slates.

I recently came across a blog post that listed 30 things to stop doing to yourself.  Stop being scared to make a mistake.  Stop thinking you’re not ready.  Stop being ungrateful.

Hmm. Stop doing things. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

I’ve picked out a few favorites from the list that resonated with me most. Some are definitely easier said than done, but empowering reminders, nonetheless. I’ve definitely added a few or more of these onto my own list of goals for the New Year, and hope the list inspires you to make positive changes in your life as well.

Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.

Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.

Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.

Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.

Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary.

Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy. One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time? Three years? Five years?” If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.

Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

What are some of your resolutions for 2012?

From Sue and Addy.

We believe that our shiny new site isn’t just a place for Jigsaw to share our work, opinions, thoughts and experiences as an idea agency. It is another tool to help our clients and interested others navigate through a hyperconnected and fast-paced world where we have 140 characters/10 seconds to get someone’s attention. When one of our clients sent us Eunju Lie’s “When it Comes To Marketing, Twitter Destroys Facebook” in Business Insider and asked for our opinion, we thought to share our answer with everyone since it’s likely that many people might have the same question.

So what is the answer? Is Twitter better than Facebook for social marketing? Some would say yes, others would say no, and we say “It depends.”

How do you decide which platform is a better fit for your organization? We’re going to provide some general guidelines here; however, this is not to say that there are not exceptions. There are many variables and not “one right answer” that applies to all marketing scenarios.

First, define the goal. What are you trying to achieve with your participation in these social media tools? Increase awareness? Traffic? Donations? Sales? Loyalty? Build a community? Provide customer support? Position individuals within the organization as thought leaders?

Twitter is generally a stronger platform for:

• Driving awareness, because of the way people stumble upon interesting content and decide to follow the originator of the content.
• Providing customer support, because of its “now” nature. However, some brands, like Samsung, are exploring the opportunities to provide customer service on Facebook too.
• General online reputation management/thought leadership strategies, including media relations.

Facebook is generally more powerful when used to:

• Engage and involve loyal customers.
• Empower ambassadors.

Both platforms are quite effective for:

• Building relationships and loyalty among existing customers/users: especially for passion brands. People like Facebook Fan Pages because they already like the brand IRL; this is really the sweet spot of Facebook as a tool. However, a positive, fast response to a customer on Twitter can convert a dissatisfied customer to an advocate.
• Event promotion: Both tools can be effective here, depending on who the audience for the event is. Twitter is the better option if the audience is tech savvy individuals or to capture the attention of people who are making last minute plans. Facebook is much better for general audiences. Facebook also has a live stream box in partnership with Ustream, which can be used to broadcast events.
• Fundraising: Twitter can also be an outstanding fundraising tool, because of its inherent nature as a grass roots conversation. However, Facebook, too, can be used very effectively for fundraising purposes. You can empower people to tell your story on Twitter or use Facebook Causes to increase donations.
• Traffic: One the one hand, Google ranks tweets in real-time search, which is how Twitter can help you increase traffic to your website, as long as you don’t spam your followers with self-promotional tweets only. Remember to write for the user, not just the search engines. On the other hand, Facebook drives more social traffic to websites. Although Facebook drives more social media traffic to websites, it is important to understand that the traffic doesn’t come from a link on a corporate Facebook Fan Page, but from the links people share with their friends. You can take advantage of this by creating amazing content and making it easy for the visitor to share the content.

What about driving sales? Tougher question.

Both platforms provide many opportunities: JetBlue shares discounts on Twitter while Delta sells tickets on its Facebook page.

Dell Computers has sold >$2MM in computers through it’s Twitter profile; however, it is important to note that they spent several years building social credibility online before that occurred. It didn’t happen overnight.

The book #TwitterWorks details how restaurant AJBombers and pizza truck Streetza Pizza grew passionate, loyal followings and sales in large part through participation on Twitter.

This year we also saw the rise of f-commerse. Brands like Levi’s use Facebook’s social plugins to increase reviews of products, which also increases sales. Disney Store has a store locator on its Facebook page. Munich allows fans to customize sneakers on Facebook and buy them from the site. Pampers’ fans can buy products straight from the Facebook page. The social giant can increase not only online sales, but also offline. Many fashion brands show their newest collections online and drive foot traffic to stores.

You can engage and involve (potential) customers and develop relationships with them on Twitter to increase sales. Or you can provide utility by moving the shopping experience to Facebook.

Where does your audience want to engage?

The next important factor in selecting a social network for marketing purposes is, of course, identifying the audience and understanding how it uses these platforms. Does the audience prefer Facebook to Twitter? Does it use both platforms? If so, what are the differences in behavior? What kind of content does it prefer to consume? What kind of content does it prefer to share? Why does it share?

One in ten people on the planet has a Facebook account and some people use it more often than others. But Facebook is the network for our IRL relationships: people we already know, like and trust, not to make new relationships, which is what Twitter is great for. The micro-blogging platform is also used to nurture already existing relationships, but its users are much more likely to engage with strangers with similar interests and discuss products, services and brands. Twitter users also tend to be younger, urban and more technology savvy than Facebook users.

It is important to note the increasing numbers of people accessing both social networks via mobile devices which affects how much time they spend on these networks, how often they go online, what content they are more likely to view and share.

Forrester Research provides useful information on how different demographics use social media in its Technographics Profiling Tool. However, there isn’t yet a lot of concrete information on specifically how different audience segments use the two major social networks.

Twitter and Facebook as Advertising Platforms

Another opportunity both networks offer is advertising. Although Facebook approaches ads more traditionally than Twitter, it allows for very narrow targeting so you can reach those five people in Richland Center who are under 30 and interested in collaborative consumption. Twitter’s advertising platform is based on resonance and engagement. It provides more than one advertising option: promoted tweets, promoted accounts and promoted trends.

Facebook and Twitter are both great tools, what makes a difference is how you are going to use them and how many resources you have available because it is not enough to just have a Facebook Fan Page or a Twitter account. What is even more important is that Facebook and Twitter are not the only social platforms. Instead of asking “Should we use Facebook or Twitter?”, ask “Which platform(s) serves our needs best?” and “What is our strategy for how we will engage and involve?”

Enough from us. What is your answer?  Twitter or Facebook? Which one is better for social marketing?

Everyone on earth has been told they needed to, “think outside the box.” It’s a tired old term. But ironically, I’m here to suggest that what it replaced—”thinking inside the box”— is now actually more true in today’s uber-connected world.

See, thinking outside the box worked when our job was to “interupt” people. To come up with a crazy idea that would get people to take notice—a “hey look at me” tactic. Go back to Apple’s “1984″ commercial. Or anyone remember, like them or hate them, the Quizno’s spongmonkey commercials? I realize some reading may not have been born in 1984, but Apple’s Macintosh launch was a piece of  advertising history worth knowing about and it was certainly noticed back then.

Now fast forward to the millions of “viral” videos. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “Do something outside the box—like make one of those viral videos.” First mistake in that statement is it wasn’t going to be viral until at least one viewer said it was good enough to share. And second, what the heck is the purpose? Seemed no one ever had too much of that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot about popular content. But, I have to admit, I am a strategic creative. While I like creative for creative’s sake from time to time, I’m an inside out kind of a guy—I’d prefer to cuddle up to some research and some key consumer insights before I try to solve a problem. And I’d suggest that some of the more brilliant marketing tactics of late, start from painting oneself into a corner before knocking it out of the ballpark. Or to use the metaphor it the title, thinking inside the box can help you achieve succeess well outside the box.

As creatives, strategy is our friend. It tells us what to say to whom. It doesn’t restrict our thinking, it just channels our thoughts. If strategy comes with insights gathered from data or qualitative research that you trust, even better. Because of that, I’ve never really thought about thinking “outside the box,” the process to me is always inside, the fruits of our labor are what fall outside the box.

Strategy and insights form the foundation of what we do, always been true, never truer. What we used to do, whether we thought about it as out of the box thinking or not, was toss rocks over the sides of the box. Like a viral video here, or a guerilla tactic there. All concieved to make a ripple in a crowd of people. But to what end? Did it matter that most of the people who witnessed the message could care less about a brand? Well, for the most part it didn’t matter. Until the consumer got a way to be heard.

The way I see it now (refer to the sketch), we stand on strategy as firm as ever. We need consumer insights now more than ever. Why, well look in that box—as creative people (that means every person in this place), we now have two challenges that the new world is making us responsible for: setting goals, and measuring our success. They are finding their way into the foundation of what we do every day. Want proof? Just count how many times you’ve heard “social marketing” and “ROI” mentioned in the same sentence the past 12 months.

Our jobs are no longer about tossing ideas over the walls of the box from the solid ground of strategy and insight—to interrupt—without concern for what happened to our precious concept until far later. It’s now about breaking down the walls to get engagement and involvement—immediately. While our ideas can be outrageous and incredible, they are deliberate—because we know what we are asking for in return. And it’s more  than a “please don’t surf to another channel while my commercial is on.”

How do we break down the barriers? Well, pick a wall, the directions are there. Choose “relevancy” or “utility” or maybe it’s to break down a wall with a “shared purpose” or belief. You can use an “incentive” or a “cultural movement,” you can use any motivation a group or individual responds to. The key is that they respond.

I contend that while social media and the likes include a lot of experimentation and adjustment, success is a calculated guess, not a shot in the dark. Consumers tell us what they think. They tell us what they want. We use our gut instincts to judge a creative idea based on what we know. Same as always. What’s different is that the medium could be anything. And the success isn’t only based on sales or next year’s benchmark research on awareness and perception.

The point is, even if you were on board with out of the box thinking, it doesn’t cut it anymore. Get back in the box and think your way out.

I’d be happy to hear others’ theories on where thinking has evolved. What’s changed for you?