Selected by chrisbrogan

• 
  TweetMeme: News

• Screenshots: Google Buzz In Action

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:18 am

  Now that the Google event is over, the company has started turning on Buzz for Gmail users. Here are some quick screenshots of it in action.CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase0 comments Source: techcrunch.com

• Announcing the Gowalla API « Gowalla

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:09 am

  Today we are excited to release the first public version of the Gowalla API. Starting now, developers can build applications that use Gowalla data in fun and interesting ways. All of the technical details can be found by browsing the API Explorer, reading the documentation, and visiting the gowalla-dev Google Group.User-created and curated content is central to Gowalla. Every spot in our database…0 comments Source: gowalla.com

• Google Buzz re-invents Gmail - O'Reilly Radar

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  When I first heard about Google Buzz, I was worried that I might be seeing the birth of another "me too" product. After all, everyone wants a piece of the Twitter halo. But with the release of Buzz today, you can see how Google has taken the social media lessons of Twitter and applied them to their own core products.I'm especially fond of Gmail Buzz, which adds the power of asymmetric following…0 comments Source: radar.oreilly.com

• If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:40 am

  See our live notes from today’s Google Buzz event here.Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even…0 comments Source: techcrunch.com

• Gowalla To Roll Out API Today

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:35 am

  As location-based social networks gain serious traction, its inevitable that that these applications will become full-fledged platforms. Like Twitter, these networks can become ecosystems. Plus, they have a better chance of continuing to survive when Facebook enters the location ring. Foursquare got released its API in November. And now Gowalla will be releasing its API today, we’ve heard. We…0 comments Source: techcrunch.com

• 
  TweetMeme: Popular

• Google Buzz re-invents Gmail - O'Reilly Radar

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  When I first heard about Google Buzz, I was worried that I might be seeing the birth of another "me too" product. After all, everyone wants a piece of the Twitter halo. But with the release of Buzz today, you can see how Google has taken the social media lessons of Twitter and applied them to their own core products.I'm especially fond of Gmail Buzz, which adds the power of asymmetric following…0 comments Source: radar.oreilly.com

• If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:40 am

  See our live notes from today’s Google Buzz event here.Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even…0 comments Source: techcrunch.com

• Gowalla To Roll Out API Today

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:35 am

  As location-based social networks gain serious traction, its inevitable that that these applications will become full-fledged platforms. Like Twitter, these networks can become ecosystems. Plus, they have a better chance of continuing to survive when Facebook enters the location ring. Foursquare got released its API in November. And now Gowalla will be releasing its API today, we’ve heard. We…0 comments Source: techcrunch.com

• Google aims to take on Facebook with new social feature called "Buzz" | Technology | ...

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:34 am

  Google, which has faltered in its attempts to break into the booming social networking business, is making another bid to counter the growing influence of Silicon Valley rival Facebook and San Francisco upstart Twitter with new products that make it easier to share with friends on its Internet e-mail service Gmail. The Internet giant held a press conference at its Mountain View, Calif.,…0 comments Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com

• Google Officially Announces Google Buzz – A Google Approach To Sharing

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:22 am

  We are updating, bear with us.As we expected after yesterday’s breaking news, Google has officially announced a new product called Google Buzz, a real time filtering feature .Google has been discussing sharing and filtering all morning, and their new vision to handle all the noise is called Google Buzz.Google Buzz is a new way to share and filter inside of Gmail. It is akin to a whole new…0 comments Source: thenextweb.com

• 
  TweetMeme: Events

• Screenshots: Google Buzz In Action

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:18 am

  Now that the Google event is over, the company has started turning on Buzz for Gmail users. Here are some quick screenshots of it in action.CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase0 comments Source: techcrunch.com

• Live From Google's February Event: Google Gets Twittery - Google - Gizmodo

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:35 am

  This is what a Google product launch event looks like? It reminds me of amateur night down at the chuckle hut. Jonathan Parent0 comments Source: gizmodo.com

• Liveblogging the Google Buzz Launch

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:57 am

  Google is set to announce a new social tool at a 10:00 am event on its Mountain View campus. Due to the last-minute notice, we’re not on the scene, but Google is providing a webcast via YouTube that we’ll be using.Stay tuned for the liveblogging to start at 10 am or shortly thereafter….Okay, so it’s [...]....0 comments Source: searchengineland.com

• N.Y. Group Mobilizes To Help Girl Prevented From Graduating By Homelessness

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:32 am

  New York City bureaucrats won't let Rosa Bracero graduate from high school because her family is homeless.The Daily News reported Thursday that Bracero missed her Regents exam two weeks ago because her family was being evicted that day and the city's intake center requires every family member to show up for to apply for shelter. Bracero took a makeup exam, but the state won't validate the…0 comments Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

• There Should Be No Secrets In Our Relationship Excluding The Events Of March 2, 2004 | The ...

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:26 am

  Onion Daily- Opinion: There Should Be No Secrets In Our Relationship Excluding The Events Of March 2, 2004 (by Cra... http://bit.ly/9thXON0 comments Source: www.theonion.com

• 
  @tweetmeme

• tweetmeme: OrderYourName.com Affordable, full service web hosting packages. http://retwt.me/1LXtx (via @TNDaily01)

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:32 pm

  tweetmeme: OrderYourName.com Affordable, full service web hosting packages. http://retwt.me/1LXtx (via @TNDaily01)

• tweetmeme: Quicktake: What Google Buzz Means http://retwt.me/1LXtq (via @bViral)

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:03 pm

  tweetmeme: Quicktake: What Google Buzz Means http://retwt.me/1LXtq (via @bViral)

• tweetmeme: BREAKING: Lil Wayne Not Going To Jail Today | Official ImGlobalNow Blog | ImGlobalNow News and Celeb... http://is.gd/8207N (via @GGPolitics)

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:53 am

  tweetmeme: BREAKING: Lil Wayne Not Going To Jail Today | Official ImGlobalNow Blog | ImGlobalNow News and Celeb... http://is.gd/8207N (via @GGPolitics)

• tweetmeme: Announcing the Gowalla API « Gowalla http://retwt.me/1LXsp (via @jmwhittaker)

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

  tweetmeme: Announcing the Gowalla API « Gowalla http://retwt.me/1LXsp (via @jmwhittaker)

• tweetmeme: Screenshots: Google Buzz In Action http://retwt.me/1LXqz (via @TechCrunch)

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:31 am

  tweetmeme: Screenshots: Google Buzz In Action http://retwt.me/1LXqz (via @TechCrunch)

• 
  Copyblogger

• Does Writing for People Work for SEO?

  Brian Clark

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:16 am

  Hang around web writing circles for any length of time, and the inevitable “write for search engines or write for people” debate comes up. It’s a bit strange, really. Last time I checked, it’s people who use search engines, not some other life form. So you’re always writing for people. Obviously, the debate stems from the fact that search engines are powered by computer algorithms. But as search engines have gotten smarter, writing that pleases people and satisfies spiders is not that far apart, if at all. Let’s look at four factors that work well for SEO and see how well they…

• The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion

  Nathan Hangen

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:49 am

  I’ve found it just doesn’t pay to crow too much about what I’ve accomplished. Sure, I celebrate when things go well. But I’ve found that talking too much about my achievements leads not only to criticism, but to disappointment. There’s always going to be someone who’s done more or worked harder. And until they carve my name into the side of the moon, I see no reason in puffing myself up. The minute you get a big head is the same minute that reality smacks you and you realize that you aren’t as cool as you think you are. So self-adulation is something I try to stay…

• Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting

  Brian Clark

  5 Feb 2010 | 8:51 am

  When I first started Copyblogger in 2006, I was almost militantly against on-page search optimization. Seems strange, since I’d been a successful student of SEO since 2000. It was because I saw all these people fretting over keywords like it’s 1999, and yet they had no links. Their content was weak. Their sites weren’t trusted. You can’t optimize something that’s dead in the water. So my initial goal was to get people to focus on content that attracted attention and links first. Only then do you have something you can make better (that’s what optimize means, naturally). Fours…

• Landing Page Makeovers 2007-2009: Where Are They Now?

  Roberta Rosenberg

  4 Feb 2010 | 6:46 am

  This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work. It occurred to me late last year, as I was readying yet another Landing Page Makeover, that the end of one year and the beginning of the next was a good time to do a “Where are they now?” post. So first things first, I went back and contacted all makeover participants from the very beginning of the series. Of the more than 20 contacted, I learned that one is no longer in business, MagicPumpkinArt.com (Makeover #14) and two are in the midst of developing new products or revising…

• Does SEO Copywriting Still Matter?

  Brian Clark

  3 Feb 2010 | 8:28 am

  If there’s any one thing that can be said about SEO with certainty, it’s that it manages to cause a lot of confusion. For example, it seems like many people’s idea of SEO was formed 10 years ago, and hasn’t bothered to change with the times. Even an online veteran like Robert Scoble is completely clueless about modern best practices for search engine optimization. So, before we go any further, let me answer the question posed by the headline . . . Yes, SEO copywriting still matters. Here’s why. Search is still the biggest game in town “Pick your survey, search remains one of the…

• 
  ProBlogger Blog Tips

• Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block

  Darren Rowse

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:24 am

  And now for a guest post with a difference from Cartoonist Mark Anderson from Andertoons.com who created this comic to illustrate the writing techniques he uses to create his cartoons, and how they can help bloggers push through writer’s block. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger. Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block Share This

• Have a 37 Minute Coffee Break with Me [Audio Interview]

  Darren Rowse

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:43 am

  If you have a spare 37 minutes today to grab a coffee with me (or at least are doing something that will allow you to listen to something for 37 minutes in the background) check out this interview I did with Robb Sutton late last week. Robb’s also transcribed it for those who prefer to read. In the interview Rob asks me about a whole range of stuff including: my background in blogging my philosophy on lots of sites vs focusing upon a single (or just a few) sites the process of going full time (and my wife’s six month ultimatum) my shift in focus to e-books and membership sites a…

• What Is Your Blogging Goal for February?

  Darren Rowse

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:22 am

  A few days back I asked readers a question: What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back? Some of the responses to the question in comments (and via email and Twitter) revealed a lot of bloggers really wanting to step things up and get what they’ve been putting off done. So – lets set some goals – what do you want to achieve by the end of February? I’m not going to be calling you up to check up to see if you’re meeting your goals – but hopefully in putting them down publicly you’ll find yourself a little more spurred on to reach…

• 9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days

  Daniel Scocco

  7 Feb 2010 | 6:34 am

  Guest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips. I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it. Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that…

• How I Got Some Paying Sponsors Without Really Meaning To

  Darren Rowse

  6 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  A guest post by Josh Hanagarne. World’s Strongest Librarian was about four months old when I got interested in sponsors. I’d read the articles about how to do it, and none of them sounded that plausible for me and my situation. For one, my traffic wasn’t impressive, certainly not to the point where sponsors were approaching me. And, while my blog has become slightly more focused in its first ten months, it wasn’t targeted at any group of readers in particular, so I wasn’t sure how confident niche advertisers would be. It’s a little more focused now, but I can’t really think of a…

• 
  ReadWriteWeb

• How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:31 am

  Google rolled out a social stream service today called Buzz. It looks on the surface like Facebook, FriendFeed and other stream reading and writing services. It will compete with Facebook and Twitter. Under the covers, though, this major product was built by a team of people taking a radical new approach to online publishing: Buzz is all about open, standardized user data. Google Buzz data can be syndicated out to other services using the standard data formats called Atom, Activity Streams, MediaRSS and PubSubHubbub. That couldn't be more different from Facebook. Google has taken open data…

• Mobile Health: Will Network Applications Help Us Get Healthy?

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 am

  Last week, we were at the mHealth initiative conference in Washington D.C. The keynotes were all about the impact mobile health applications are having in shaping the future of the health care system. Nothing demonstrates that more than the iPhone. In the 18 months since it was released, it has been perhaps the biggest thing to happen to health care electronic records, which has seen billions of dollars worth of investment in past decades. Mobile and wireless health applications directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit,…

• Foursquare Partners with Zagat, New York Times

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:17 am

  Foursquare has come out strong in recent weeks with partnership deals that look to put it at the top of the location-based app game. Last week, it announced a partnership with Bravo, the style and fashion-centric television network, and today it has come out with a partnership with Zagat, the restaurant guide, and the New York Times. As we wrote last week, Foursquare is competing in an increasingly crowded space, and these partnerships may help it attract a whole new audience and remain competitive against other services, like Yelp, just joining in the location-based arena. Sponsor According…

• Live Blogging from Google: Launch of Google Buzz

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:11 am

  This morning, Google is announcing some exciting new features for two of its most popular applications. Team Red, as we affectionately call ourselves, is present at the Googleplex in Mountain View, and we'll be live blogging the event, giving you, dear reader, a fascinating play-by-play. Stay tuned for updates! The event will begin at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Just refresh this post to see new content as events unfold. Additional on-the-fly research and images from RWW journalist Frederic Lardinois. Sponsor 11:11: The event is over! Time to chase people down and ask some more pointed questions.

• Europe's 17 Golden Rules for Keeping Safe on Social Networks

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:05 am

  Are you using your real name on your social network profiles? According to the European Union's Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), that's a big mistake. A new report, published to coincide with Europe's Safer Internet Day, details the dangers of using social networks and lays out 17 "golden rules" for keeping safe on social networks. The report's authors are especially worried about the proliferation of mobile social networks and, among other things, recommend that users turn off all location-based services whenever they are not absolutely needed. Sponsor The report argues that…

• 
  Mashable!

• Google Buzz: The Official Demo [VIDEO]

  Adam Ostrow

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:08 am

  Google has just unveiled its latest attempt to become more relevant in the social media space: Google Buzz. The product is integrated within Gmail and will be rolled out gradually to all of the webmail service’s users over the next few days.We’re still digesting all of the implications of Buzz (and will have more coverage throughout the day), but in the meantime, here’s the two-minute demo of the product in action both on the Web and via mobile that Google showed off during today’s press conference:What are your initial reactions? Another soon-to-be-forgotten Google social product? A…

• BREAKING: Google Goes Social with Google Buzz

  Ben Parr

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:21 am

  It’s official: Google has just announced Google Buzz, its newest push into the social media foray. This confirms earlier reports of Gmail integrating a social status feature.On stage revealing the new product was Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management. While introducing the product, Mr. Horowitz focused on the human penchant for sharing experiences and the social media phenomenon of wanting to share it in real time. These two key themes were core philosophies behind Google Buzz.“It’s becoming harder and harder to find signal in the…

• Facebook Kills Lexicon, Focuses on Analytics for Page Admins

  Samuel Axon

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:20 am

  Facebook has removed its Lexicon analytics app, blogger Steve Rubel noticed last night.Don’t know what Lexicon was? That’s OK, a lot of people didn’t; it was announced very quietly, but it was a neat tool. You could use Lexicon to see how frequently, and when, certain terms were trending in status updates, just like you can use Google Trends to do the same with search terms.For example, our own Stan Schroeder was a bit perplexed a couple years back when the word “sex” had a massive spike in usage on May 30, 2008. It was the launch day of the Sex and the City…

• 7 Ways to Promote Your Offline Event Using Social Media

  Susan Payton

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:10 am

  Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog, and teaches marketing courses at Marketing EggSchool. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.We all know about Tweetups and online events, but what about events that you didn’t specifically invite the Twitterati to attend? Conferences, meetings and parties are all events that might not have started online, but which can definitely benefit from online promotion and mention.Leverage your offline event with some smart social media marketing. Here are…

• WordPress To Posterous Users: Graduate to a Full Blog

  Jennifer Van Grove

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:57 am

  In an effort to remind you that WordPress can be just as flexible and e-mail-friendly as Posterous, the company has released a Posterous importer for users who want to “graduate” from the mini-blogging site to “a full blog with the features, flexibility and reliability of WordPress.com.”The new WordPress.com utility can be found via the Tools section within the Dashboard. All that’s required to run the import is your Posterous host name, user name and password, and it can import all of the following: posts, tags, comments and images.On the flip side, Posterous…

• 
  Logic+Emotion

• We Are The Media. Do We Trust Media?

  David Armano

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:22 am

    First, an informal disclaimer. While I work for the firm (Edelman) that conducted the 2010 Trust Barometer, the following opinions expressed are personal and I was not involved with the research or creation of the report. That said, I wanted to express a few non data based thoughts around the the specific finding that there is less trust in a "person like yourself".Now, let's get into why this is worth discussing. Based on comments and conversation which I've seen in industry publications and elsewhere there seems to be a concern that this finding flies in the face of social conventional…

• The Unofficial SXSW Survival Guide

  David Armano

  6 Feb 2010 | 12:07 pm

    Having passed on my slot to the folks at Dachis Group, I will not be speaking this year at SXSW (interactive) but I will be attending. It will be my second time, and I'm happy to share that there will indeed be a sequel to the sleeper hit event last year known as "Allhat". This year we are going with "Allhat II: Return of the Cattle", and it's sure to be even better complete with local live music thanks to the support from Edelman Digital. That said, there were several things I learned from surviving SXSW, and you might want to take some of them into consideration.Go With The FlowSXSW can…

• Why I'm Not Writing a Book (Right Now)

  David Armano

  31 Jan 2010 | 8:17 pm

  There's really nothing like a book—they are portable, intimate, useful, influential and the good ones tend to go "viral" in the sense that you share them with people you know. And of course today we have new ways to digest them: from audio to Kindles to iPads etc. A question I've been getting a lot lately is:"When are you writing a book"?I've had some interest—from publishers you've heard of. But the answer is:"Not right now".My logic is simple. One cannot serve two masters—and serve them well. Either my full time job or the book would suffer. So the time is not now. I've got things to…

• Six Ways to Find Social Media Talent

  David Armano

  29 Jan 2010 | 6:40 pm

  More articles on Harvard BusinessAs organizations move their social media strategies from theory to practice, they discover a difficult truth they must confront: Finding the "perfect" social media talent is practically impossible. To start, the field is flooded with thousands of self proclaimed "experts" who have reinvented themselves to take advantage what looks like a growing business opportunity. Maybe they do know social media, but many don't. They need to be vetted. More broadly, most candidates for social media positions fall at the ends of a spectrum. On one end is the person who…

• The 5 Reasons You're Failing In Social Media

  David Armano

  21 Jan 2010 | 1:28 pm

  1. You really don't want to engage directly with customers, employees, etc.—you just want them to hear what you have to say. 2. You're not ready to create new roles, update process, re-distribute resources and budgets, re-train people, and revise old policies. 3. Social media actually threatens how you make money—but you pay lip service out of fear.4. Politics.5. You see it as a career advancing opportunity as opposed to a significant business transformation.Reverse any of these, and you've likely improved your chances of succeeding in a business environment that's becoming increasingly…

• 
  Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

• Why Businesses Still Aren’t Engaging Online With Their Customers

  ME Liz Strauss

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:54 am

  A Guest Post by Frank Angelone Are you a business? Whether you are a large corporation or a small business, you should be engaging with your customers. As many already know, the best way to engage with your customers is through social media. There are so many sites available at your disposal to be an active participant, yet many businesses still aren’t using social media to its full potential. Why is this? Well, I believe it can be answered in 5 bullet points… Laziness. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t engage in social media, your sales for your business…

• 3 Simple Steps to Add Irresistible Influence to Your Brand

  ME Liz Strauss

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:20 am

  Magnetic from the Very First Minute! What makes a person or a company unforgettable from the second you interact? Why do some folks motivate and energize us? What is it about some folks that attracts people so powerfully? What makes a magnetic personality? Is it possible for a company or a brand to have those qualities? Can we carry them online and off? 3 Simple Steps to Add Irresistible Influence to Your Brand The brands and the businesses we love don’t just deliver on a promise. They make us feel good about working with them and feel good about being part of what they’re doing.

• Beach Notes: What Goes into Effortless?

  ME Liz Strauss

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:25 am

  by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh A couple of times recently we have seen this man at our local beach, Rainbow Bay, with a didgeridoo ( or yidaki), the traditional Australian Aboriginal musical intrument. This day we saw and heard him playing with the end of the “didge” submerged at the water’s edge. My thought was that there might be some spiritual explanation, connecting with the spirits of the sea, etc. A bit of a web search suggests something more mundane. Evidently the exercise of playing the instrument in this way trains the diaphragm and builds the player’s…

• Thanks to Week 224 SOBs

  ME Liz Strauss

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:56 am

  Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Let me introduce the bloggers who have earned this official badge of achievement, and the right to call themselves Successful Blog SOBs. I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs. They take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger. I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on. Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community. Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award…

• SOB Business Cafe 02-05-10

  ME Liz Strauss

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:03 am

  Welcome to the SOB Cafe We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection. The Specials this Week are Doc Searls Weblog What you have to appreciate, even admire, is how well Apple plays the vertical game. It’s really amazing. What you also have to appreciate is how much we also need the horizontal one. The iPad needs an open alternative, soon. There should be for the iPad what Google’s Nexus One is for the iPhone. Up the creek…

• 
  PR 2.0

• The State of Social Media Around the World 2010

  brian

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 am

  If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating…

• The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing

  brian

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:14 am

  Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten…

• Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet

  brian

  3 Feb 2010 | 4:42 am

  Sounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.According to the report, Apple’s iTunes + iPhone/Touch ecosystem…

• The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search

  brian

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:57 am

  In 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age.The opportunities…

• Who is the ME in Social Media?

  brian

  29 Jan 2010 | 4:11 am

  Good friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on…

• 
  HorsePigCow

• Minding the Gap

  Tara Hunt

  2 Feb 2010 | 9:20 am

  One of the messages I’ve been lucky enough to be spreading lately is that of questioning the gap between business and human values. I started thinking about this issue almost two years ago, but wasn’t able to quite shape it into the message I needed to get across until earlier this year when I was preparing to give a workshop at Best Buy HQ for the Social Media Club Reality Check Series in January. It occurred to me as I finished up The Whuffie Factor and was traveling around talking about it, there were parts of my message that were valued by business leaders and other parts that…

• Would You Sacrifice Love for Greatness?

  Tara Hunt

  1 Feb 2010 | 10:34 pm

  For nearly two years now, I’ve been part of an amazing event that isn’t widely publicized and is, shockingly (for me, anyway), invite only. It’s invite only because it takes place in women’s kitchens and dining rooms and assumes a good amount of trust and intimacy. This event was christened Comfort Food Club because of the original intent to comfort me after a breakup with a nice meal and conversation in a trusted space. Our conversations are private and our bonds are palpable because of the trust. So this post isn’t going to break that bond of trust, but I do…

• Power to Change the Broken System

  Tara Hunt

  7 Jan 2010 | 1:10 pm

  Most all of us, whether we notice it or not, spend a good part of our lives in some form of consumer-company interaction. Whether we are shopping for groceries, banking, paying rent, shopping for clothes, picking a movie, buying a book, selling our services, working for a company whose services we are performing for customers or eating at a restaurant. I’m not sure what percentage of our lives are spent on one side of the equation or the other, but I’d guess that a good majority of our time is spent consuming or selling. And though I dislike the term ‘consumer’, the…

• Guest Post: Washington Forgets Best Case for Immigration Reform

  miss rogue

  6 Jan 2010 | 7:40 am

  Written by: Richard Herman The White House has once again announced its commitment to immigration law reform in early 2010. So far, however, there is no sign that the administration, the Congress, or any other national leaders have learned the lessons from past attempts on this issue, most notably the ugly debate and legislative failure in 2007. Ask people on the street what they think of when they hear the word “immigrant” — particularly with 10% unemployment in the country —- and you will hear statements like: “They take our jobs,” “They bring…

• The Hegemony of Proper English

  Tara Hunt

  3 Jan 2010 | 5:39 pm

  From Resolution On The Oakland “Ebonics” Issue Unanimously Adopted at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, January 3, 1997: The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as “slang,” “mutant,” “lazy,” “defective,” “ungrammatical,” or “broken English” are incorrect and demeaning. When this resolution was widely agreed…

• 
  Marketing Profs Daily Fix

• Trending ‘Functionall’

  Ted Mininni

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:28 am

  Reinier Evers founder of trendwatching.com can always be counted on to weigh in on new trends every month. As is the case with all prognosticating, there’s always the risk of being wrong. But in Evers’s case, I think he’s had considerably more hits than misses. Trendwatching’s latest caught my eye more than most. The headline screams one word: “Functionall.” The subhead: “Why simple, small & cheap appeals to all.” The definition of Functionall: Captures the phenomenon of simple, small and/or cheap products and services designed for low(er)-income consumers…

• MarketingProfs B2B Forum Ramp Up: What I Have Learned About B2B Marketing

  Kathy Bushman

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:36 am

  As part of my journey in developing the content for an educational conference, in this case MarketingProfs B2B Forum, I do a lot of research. I spend a lot of time on the web looking at competitive conferences (and non-competitive conferences) as well as reading many white papers, articles and blogs. We also take seriously any feedback that we’ve gotten from the attendees at our last event and we poll the MarketingProfs community about topics they need education on through crowdsourcing, discussions on our community sites and in the form of questions sent out as tweets. But most important…

• Guest Post: The 4 Pillars Of B2B Marketing-The Lifecycle Of a B2B Campaign

  Ann Handley

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:37 am

  By Achim Klor SterlingKlor Communications I recently read an excellent post by Paul Dunay on Social Media Today presenting the 4 C’s of B2B marketing. We’ve known about the 4 P’s of marketing for years: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Paul argues the 4 P’s are primarily a B2C mix. The 4 C’s, however, (Content, Connection, Communications, Conversion) illustrate the marketing mix for B2B. Sounds great, but how should B2B organizations implement the 4 C’s marketing mix into their campaigns? I would like to highlight an approach that has served our B2B agency very…

• Interview With Seth Godin: Linchpin

  John Wall Christopher Penn

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  In this Marketing Over Coffee brought to you by MarketingProfs: We talk with Seth Godin about his new book: Linchpin Marketing Over Coffee with Seth Godin Direct Link to File Show length 23:30 00:52 What’s Linchpin about? 02:30 How do entrepreneurial linchpins fit in to large organizations? 05:40 Who are the artists? 06:55 Can you get beyond Dunbar’s Number? Gary V. is using Twitter to add two zeros. 08:10 What is The Resistance? What is Emotional Labor? 11:22 Thrashing – a classic Marketing problem, and yes, Duke Nukem! Real artists ship. 14:16 Is there any future for mass media…

• How To Build a Brand Internationally

  Paul Williams

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  Congratulations! Your company is successful locally, and now you want to share what you do with the world. In many ways, the process will be like re-starting your business. Many of the activities you performed to launch your initial business are the same you will employ in each of your new international markets. However, much of your time will be spent translating (literally and figuratively) to ensure you are locally relevant to your new customers. A Brand = A Reputation The term “brand” can be confusing. Think of a brand as a reputation. Building a reputation in any new market…

• 
  PR-Squared

• Social Media Abhors A Vacuum

  Todd Defren

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:07 am

  One of the issues that large brands must worry about — especially franchise brands — is IF and HOW local affiliates and employees decide to participate online. For example, take a look at a well-known brand like real estate giant Century 21. In addition to the official @C21realestate handle managed by Corp Comms in Parsippany, there are over 350 Century21 employees and/or franchisees on Twitter. Their Twitter handles range from @C21_SUNBELT to @Cntury21, from @Century21Seller to @RealtorToCall (and any number of @firstnamelastname combinations, i.e., no C21 affiliation). Some of these…

• Guess Who’s Talking: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas

  Todd Defren

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  Continuing our series on Social Media Ethical Dilemmas, this post is about the guidelines related to agencies who help client contacts to identify and engage, via commenting, on industry/influencer blogs. The goal is to insert our clients’ executives and perspectives into industry conversations; to help them build up their credibility, and ultimately to create valuable relationships with influencers. How do you do this?  How can you effectively inform and educate busy clients while also cultivating the bloggers’ goodwill in an authentic way? Here’s the general process… The Agency…

• Will RSS Fall to Apps?

  Todd Defren

  5 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  Several of my friends have launched iPhone apps recently.  (I am lookin’ at you, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Tamar Weinberg and C.C. Chapman.)  This is getting easier and easier to do, thanks to emergent services like Mobile Roadie and Motherapp. On the one hand, yea, I admit it, I smirked at each new announcement.  Felt a little too self-reverential.  Even Mitch Joel — no shrinking violet — called them “Golden Calf” apps. But I parleyed with C.C. about it, and read his post carefully.  His point is not lost on me: RSS is a tool of the elite; most folks surf their Bookmarks…

• SHIFT’s NYC PR Agency Debuts!

  Todd Defren

  3 Feb 2010 | 2:12 pm

  Last Thursday was a banner day for SHIFT, as we cut the ribbon at the opening of  our NYC office.  We celebrated in style, ‘natch, with a party that included everyone from SavvyAuntie Melanie Notkin, to reporters from the Wall Street Journal, PRWeek, MediaBistro and RealSimple, to venture capitalists, and many more friends and colleagues.  Full-house.  Raucous and fun. David Parmet of Marketing Begins at Home probably did the best job of capturing the “real me” — an unmatched combination of goofiness and ego.  I half-drunkenly stumbled out onto our NYC…

• Trail of Breadcrumbs

  Todd Defren

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:20 am

  A new survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that “an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories.” Specifically, “89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.” Per the news release: While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream…

• 
  Managing the Gray

• Amazing Things Will Happen

  C.C. Chapman

  1 Feb 2010 | 5:34 am

  February is here. The first month of 2010 is behind us, so it felt like the perfect time to check in with you on how your goals are going so far this year. Managing the Gray is here to help give you the kick when you need it in the right direction. I referenced the Conan O’Brien farewell speech and if you haven’t seen it you can watch it here. Also, I mention my good buddy and super talented musician Matthew Ebel as well. Also, I’d love you to learn more about Wediko since I’m passionate about getting the word out there about all the great things they do for children…

• What 2010 Holds

  C.C. Chapman

  12 Jan 2010 | 6:11 am

  A new year and a new decade is upon us and my plan is for Managing the Gray to help you not only get through the year, but prosper in it. I’m not big on lists, but a listener asked what trends or predications I had for the new year. Rather then spouting off possibilities I’d rather focus on reality and when you listen to the show you can hear what I had to say. After you listen to the show be sure to check out the new Lego Click site. It isn’t every day that an idea like that gets into my head so fast. I’m really curious to see how it goes for them and I guess…

• Ron Ploof Interview

  C.C. Chapman

  30 Dec 2009 | 11:34 am

  The holidays got in the way of getting this out as soon as I wanted to, but I’m excited to share with you an interview with my good friend and author Ron Ploof to discuss his new book Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media-from Blogs to Social Networks. Ron granted me the first interview about his book and any chance to catch up and chat with him is a good thing for me. I’m honored to call him a friend and am psyched for people to get out there and read this book because I think it is better then most of the ones I’ve seen and read about social media.

• Rule 53

  C.C. Chapman

  9 Dec 2009 | 4:43 am

  I recently was asked to take part in the Rule 53 podcast. Rule 53 is a cross-generational podcast that  focuses on leadership, business, technology, and professional development.  Each episode features one twentysomething student or recent graduate and his or her experienced counterpart.  The goal is to help define “Rule 53″, a curriculum for tomorrow’s leaders ad change agents. I am sharing this directly with the Managing the Gray feed because I was so excited about the concept of the show and how the interview turned out. Plus, how could I not when all three of us on the phone are…

• Army Strong Stories

  C.C. Chapman

  10 Nov 2009 | 12:03 pm

  When I went out to Blogworld Expo , one of the coolest things I got to hear about is what the US Army is doing with their new site Army Strong Stories. As soon as I heard about it I knew I was impressed and wanted to get them on the phone to talk abut it so all the Managing the Gray listeners could find out more. A special thanks to MAJ Mary Constantino for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with me about the program. As always if you enjoyed what you heard, please subscribe in iTunes or leave a review for the show.

• 
  CHRISTOPHER S. PENN

• What World of Warcraft can teach you about customer quality

  Christopher Penn

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:46 am

  One of my favorite parts of World of Warcraft is the in-game marketplace known as the Auction House. Inside the AH, you can see relatively free markets at work with minimal regulation by the game’s owners. You can especially see how market forces create supply and demand, and if you’re good at understanding human nature, you can make a fair bit of virtual money. Right now, there’s an in-game Valentine’s Day event going on. Below is a picture of the Auction House and the price of a Buttermilk Cream chocolate. The current asking price in the marketplace is $54, and…

• The danger of the dabbler

  Christopher Penn

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:39 am

  Reading this blog post by Mr. Brogan, something bubbled up from years of martial arts training. Chris argues that the goal is the focus, not the method. Kenpo karate is the method, kicking the other guy’s ass is the goal. If you threw out all your methods, the goals would still be there. Well, sometimes. There are goals which are intimately tied into methods. How you get there is part of getting there. Abandon the method every so often for what seems to be a faster, easier, cleaner, newer, better method results in you becoming a dabbler. You’re reasonably okay at a lot of things.

• Why you should install MY iPhone app

  Christopher Penn

  5 Feb 2010 | 12:11 pm

  Yes, folks, download my iPhone app! (iTunes required) It’s got some AMAZING features that will make it stand out from every other iPhone app out there: It will regularly track your movements via GPS and silently upload them to my Google Earth master map, letting me watch wherever you are on the planet in real time. It will silently disable the airplane mode so I can track you in flight. Take that, TSA! On a regular basis, it will silently sync your contacts to my secret mailing list database and mark them as double opt-in with your phone’s IP address as the confirmation IP for…

• BBC Commentary on the news

  Christopher Penn

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:47 am

  Outrageously funny and sadly true. Hat tip to Mr. Brogan. Did you enjoy this blog post? If so, please subscribe right now! Enjoyed it? Please share it! More Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com

• Your ACE in the hole: Energize!

  Christopher Penn

  2 Feb 2010 | 8:42 pm

  We talked last time about what marketing, sales, and product & service groups are supposed to manufacture. Let’s talk about the verbs that go with them, so that you have an idea if what you’re doing is in alignment with those verbs, and one verb in particular. Quick review: Marketing takes audience and makes qualified leads Sales takes qualified leads and makes customers Product design and customer service takes customers and makes evangelists So let’s take a look at the verbs of this funnel. In short: ACE. Attract. Convert. Energize. Attract is what marketing does.

• 
  SheGeeks

• Watch What You Say Offline As Well As Online

  Corvida Raven

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:28 pm

  Today, I posted about an important lesson I learned on the difference between connecting and engaging online and offline. It’s a good read so be sure to check it out. I’d like to talk to you now not about a lesson I learned, but one I’d like to share with conference organizers and people in general. What you say offline, will get you in just as much trouble as the things you say online. Allow me to explain. Harry Connick Jr. Is A Dick @LizaWasHere: @Cecilyk Remember his opening line? HCJr thought all the women bloggers would have short hair and be wearing suspenders. #blissdom At the…

• Who Are You? The Truth About Online Friends

  Corvida Raven

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:01 pm

  For the past 2 days I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the Blissdom Conference in Nashville, TN. Alli Worthington and Barbara Jones brought me out here to speak with some wonderful women about technology, blogging, and social media. However, what I found and shared with these women was an experience that started with a connection, but ended with something deeper that you should be reaching for in your online connections. Disclosure: I hate disclosures and I’m very thankful that the ladies of Blissdom paid for my travel and housing. Sorry, if you feel some sort of way about it. I’m not a…

• Outside: Amazing iPhone Weather App For Travelers

  Corvida Raven

  2 Feb 2010 | 9:23 am

  How often do you check the native weather app for the iPhone? Probably not very often. It just leaves you wanting a little more. The features of the native weather app are very basic. The UI is no better considering the capabilities of the iPhone. Now there’s an iPhone weather app for travelers that’s a little more enthusiastic about its job: Outside.              Outside: Animated Weather Outside is an amazing designed iPhone weather app for travelers. It brings back memories of the times you looked outside your window to see what the day…

• Intel Youth Rock Star Summit With Teen Tech Titans

  Corvida Raven

  27 Jan 2010 | 4:59 pm

  Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to beautiful California for the Intel Youth Rock Stars Summit at Intel HQ. Some fantastic teen tech bloggers will be joining me for a full-day of Intel gadgets and insights. I’ll be joined by: Teresa Wu of College Candy and By Teresa Wu Chris Lesinski of Hack College Kelly Sutton of Hack College Daniel Brusilovsky of Teens in Tech (tentative) Serena Wu of Social Geekette (tentative) Julia Rubin of Under the Button Arielle Patrice Scott FTC Discloser: Intel is covering my travel and accommodations. I will also be receiving a Dell Mini netbook for my participate…

• March Madness: Apple Versus Amazon, iPad Versus Kindle

  Corvida Raven

  27 Jan 2010 | 12:31 pm

  Apple is taking over the world, one iStore at a time. It started wth iTunes Store and skyrocketed with the App Store. Now some of us are waiting with curiosity and anticipation of the iBook Store. Apple announced the new Apple iPad to  were many praises and pauses across the web. We’re waiting to see if Amazon Kindle’s ebook reader crown is something the Apple iPad might look better in. The Apple iPad The iPad stands at: 9.7 inches, .5 inches thin, and 1.5lbs Multi-touch Holds up to 64GB of flash storage Powered by Apple’s very own 1Ghz Apple A4 chip 10 hour batter life / 30 days…

• 
  B.L. Ochman

• Hey Old Spice and Time Warner! You were the laughing stock of social media week new york

  BL Ochman

  7 Feb 2010 | 8:05 pm

  Old Spice was the laughing stock of Social Media Week New York when I showed this horrific photo from their lameass Residue is Evil campaign. Time Warner was close behind on the lousy campaign laugh meter. As I noted back in August 2009: "Ok, I'm not a 18 to 25 year-old man, so I'm not the demographic for the Old Spice Deodorant's Swagger contest. Nonetheless, I've never seen a more confused, obtuse, badly designed contest than the one that starts on this annoying page and gets weirder and harder to use from there. They've included their slickly produced commercials as examples, which rather,…

• Toyota: Way too little, way too late & what they should have done

  BL Ochman

  7 Feb 2010 | 9:26 am

  The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c

• #socialmedia Tweet Chat #45 - The fear factor: Shift Happens

  BL Ochman

  2 Feb 2010 | 8:05 pm

  I am immersed in Social Media Week New York, and wanted to share some of the highlights of my travels today. The theme of the day: Shift happens. Tweet Chatting with Borders Free WiFi Since there was no wifi at the new media conference I was covering today, (!?) I ended up at Borders, where the coffee was great, and the wifi was free, (thank you Borders!) so I could host the 45th edition of the hour-long weekly Twitter Social Media chat, produced by hashtagsocialmedia.com's Marc Meyer and Jason Breed. Just about everyone who's anyone in emerging media has hosted and/or participated in the…

• Thistle Farms: Marketing With Hope, Love & Social Media

  BL Ochman

  31 Jan 2010 | 7:31 pm

  Sometimes, the use of social media is a rather frivolous afterthought in marketing campaigns. In the case of Magdelene House and Thistle Farms, hope, love, and social media sell redemption. Let them show you what social media really can do. Last week, I went to a house party for Thistle Farms, a non-profit business operated by the women of Magdalene House, a two-year residential program for women who are recovering from sexual abuse, violence, and life on the streets, and who have paid dearly for their past. The party was held to celebrate the start of Magdelene's 10-city tour of prisons,…

• 2010 Social Media Week NYC: My Schedule & Recommended Events

  BL Ochman

  31 Jan 2010 | 6:27 pm

  Social Media Week NYC kicks off Monday and scores of events - almost all aimed at newbies - are planned. I'm speaking at three events this week - one online and two at the Roger Smith Hotel. Details are below along with several other events that look interesting. Where I'm speaking 1- Social Media Tweet Chat Tuesday, Feb 2 noon-1pm EST on Twitter I'll moderate a conversation on Twitter about the business of social media. These Twitter chats have been moderated by a stellar array of social media luminaries including my friends Scott Monty, Ann Handley, Shel Israel, Charlene Li, Brian Solis,…

• 
  Brand Autopsy

• Fit to Flexible (the skinny edition)

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

  Todd Sattersten has written a smart ebook, FIT TO FLEXIBLE, about pricing strategy. He blends together research from economists, theories from businesses strategists, and writings from journalists to concisely share four lessons on how businesses have more flexibility in pricing than ever before. FIXED TO FLEXIBLE is good lunchtime read. (Gotta love it when you can digest thought-provoking business knowledge in the time it takes to eat a turkey sandwich.) Not sure its possible to condense Todd’s message further. I like a challenge... so here’s my attempt to share the gist of FIXED TO…

• Tough Love For Starbucks

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  26 Jan 2010 | 2:16 pm

  It’s been almost two years since Starbucks jumped into the deep waters of social media with their MyStarbucksIdea.com program. This is a website where customers submit and discuss ideas on ways Starbucks can improve its business. Over 80,000 ideas have been submitted and late last year, Starbucks informed us over 50 ideas from customers have been implemented. Cool. Sounds great. Sounds impactful. But wait, let’s take a closer look at these customer-driven ideas Starbucks has "implemented." Of the 53 ideas Starbucks has "implemented," my closer look reveals only a handful of ideas, SIX to…

• LINCHPIN | a dramatic reading

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:16 am

  Experience Seth Godin’s newest book, LINCHPIN: Are You Indispensable, like you never thought possible ... thanks to this dramatic reading by the sultry “Miss Betty.” [NOTE: The Video Blog Association of America has given this video a rating of PG-13, some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.] >> DIRECT LINK to VIDEO [NOTE: I received a free, uncorrected proof copy of LINCHPIN. However, I will spend my money to buy the hardback version.]

• PRICELESS | in less than 300 words

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  11 Jan 2010 | 11:40 am

  Next up on the “Less Than 300” project is William Poundstone’s PRICELESS. (Truth be told, ain’t no way PRICELESS can be fully summarized in less than 300 words. No way. But, I’m giving it a shot.) PRICELESS | summarized in less than 300 words PRICELESS is an advanced studies book on pricing practices, perfect for MBA students, product marketers, and entrepreneurs. The author, William Poundstone, draws from studies by renowned economists to dive deep into the psychophysics of money to explain how the “mundane act of naming a price ... turns out to be a surprisingly tricky…

• Less Than 300 Project | TRADE-OFF

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  8 Jan 2010 | 2:21 pm

  Business books have been a mainstay topic on the Brand Autopsy blog. We’ve done straight-up reviews, shared summaries, and done inane dramatic readings. This year, I plan to share concise summaries of most every business book I read. Concise as in... less than 300 words. We kick off the Less Than 300 Project with Kevin Maney’s worthwhile book, TRADE-OFF: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t. TRADE-OFF | summarized in less than 300 words It’s common knowledge consumers make conscious decisions to trade up with some purchases and trade down with other purchases. Kevin Maney…

• 
  Church of the Customer Blog

• A tale of 2 birthday cards

  Jackie Huba

  4 Feb 2010 | 1:48 pm

  It was my birthday this week, so that usually means birthday-related direct mail from women's retail stores. I have two examples that showcase distinct differences between doing the minimum amount and doing something worth buzz. Ann Taylor delivered a typical postcard: 15% off a one-time purchase in February. "On your special day, treat yourself with your Birthday Bonus," says. "It's your birthday. May all of your wishes come true." Anthropologie sent a card in a odd-sized bubble pouch featuring a perforated cupcake with a candle on it. The candle is part of a necklace. It, too, offers 15%…

• Simplify your objectives

  Ben McConnell

  27 Jan 2010 | 4:50 am

  Strategic objectives are the Holy Grail of a company's being. They typically involve big plans, so the natural inclination is to compose a lengthy description of each objective. That means strategies and tactics are often piled into the wording of the objective. That unnecessarily complicates the objective, making it less likely to be understood quickly and efficiently. Anything not understood easily is unlikely to spread. Here's a fictitious, slightly over-the-top example of what a top-heavy objective might look like: Understand how to create better innovation opportunities for our products…

• Why it's important to be a linchpin and an artist

  Jackie Huba

  25 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

  If you want to succeed in today's world of work, author Seth Godin says you should focus on being a "linchpin." That's the title of his new book, so we asked him a few questions about it. Q: What is a linchpin, and why is it important to become one? A linchpin is the part you can't live without, the thing that makes a difference. In every organization there are one (or several) people like this. It might be the brilliant inventor who creates the impossible, but it's far more likely to be the great sales rep or customer service person who makes a connection, or the marketer who knows how to…

• 5 new ways to compete for book PR

  Ben McConnell

  18 Jan 2010 | 4:15 am

  (Editor's note: This is a guest post from Barbara Henricks of CaveHenricks, a public relations firm for business books and authors. She's considered by many to be one of the best book publicists in the publishing industry. She can be reached at barbara@cavehenricks.com.) I’ve been in the PR business nearly 20 years, and there’s been more change the past two years than in the first 18. That’s created much fear and confusion. Readers are consuming content from more outlets and with a staggering number of devices-- via iPhones, computers, Blackberries, Kindles, Nooks and Sony Readers, to…

• Please donate to Haiti earthquake relief

  Jackie Huba

  15 Jan 2010 | 10:49 am

  If you are able, please consider giving to the Haiti relief efforts. We have given to Yele Haiti, a grassroots movement that builds global awareness for Haiti while helping to transform the country through programs in education, sports, the arts and environment. Yéle Haiti was founded in 2005 by Wyclef Jean, Grammy-award winning musician, humanitarian and Goodwill Ambassador to Haiti.

• 
  Conversation Agent

• How I Participate in Social Networks

  Valeria Maltoni

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  I'm borrowing a page off the Communicatrix blog to lay out how I participate in social networks. Why? Because we all have a different strategy to how we spend our time and energy to be social and to achieve our goals and since we have a strategy, in the spirit of social, we should make it transparent. [hat tip to Skip Shuda for suggesting it]I've been getting more than many requests from several people in many networks lately. Requests to friend, requests to tweet, to forward, to bookmark, to stumble, the list goes on. Being online for the best part of my day makes me very accessible. That I…

• Are You Customer-Averse?

  Valeria Maltoni

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  We all know the story of how Comcast went from customer-averse to customer-friendly. It started online with a person, and it's making its way to the rest of the organization. You will agree with me that Comcast went from this episode, to this action, to this thinking. They went from customer-averse, to customer-friendly. It didn't happen overnight, still it did. Competition helps, too, so we keep our fingers crossed on any one company getting too big to care.Businesses continue to look for more ways to get new business either from new or current customers -- usually both, in this order. Shiny…

• Trust in Media Down, Good News for Experts

  Valeria Maltoni

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Trust in business and Government has gone up in the last year, while trust in media seems to be declining across the board -- this is the latest finding of the latest annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey. Take a look at the executive report and see that:Trust in traditional media is trending downward: TV news dropped by 20 points radio news dropped by 17 points print news dropped by 12 points Trust in digital media is still pretty low, and although corporate communications are trending higher than social networks, they're still not that high.We've all witnessed the decline of stretched news…

• The Future Online is Subscription-Based: Why I Joined Third Tribe

  Valeria Maltoni

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Clearly, the title left out a few pieces of information. I believe there is still a future online for free, but increasingly, the way to get things done, to go from conversation to agent, is subscription-based. Why? Accountability, resources, self-selected network, and opportunity to syndicate service, for a fee.The service for a fee model interests me most. That's why I joined Third Tribe as a member this week. The whole velvet rope community concept should make brands pay attention. This is not just a build a community to push your products, or just engage customers in your stuff kind of…

• We Still Get Things Done Through Search

  Valeria Maltoni

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  With all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to: help conversions connect to value build relationships extend to influentials engage via education They are all outcomes I've had the opportunity to experience and…

• 
  HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

• International SEO 101: Search Marketing for Foreign Countries and Languages

  Rebecca Churt

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:30 pm

  Many businesses only target potential customers in their local markets, but inbound marketing also allows you to easily reach prospective customers in a global marketplace. Have you optimized your site for international search engines? Do you want your business to be found or shared with a broader audience? If so, here's how you can advance your international marketing efforts more strategically. Approach international SEO first with a decision on which countries you want to target. Research and gain insight on your audience (including culture), search results and competition. You will also…

• Shocking Edelman Survey Results Reveal Less Trust in Social Media Referrals

  Pamela Seiple

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:23 am

  Public relations firm Edelman recently released its 2010 Trust Barometer, which highlights some findings regarding social media marketing that may shock you.   According to the latest survey, the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company has dropped from 45% in 2008 to 25% in 2010, decreasing almost by half! I don't know about you, but as social media continues to be a marketing hot topic, I've seen a lot of discussion emphasizing the importance of company/product referrals and word of mouth marketing.  So do these…

• Social Media Save: How Facebook Can Work for SMBs

  Kirsten Knipp

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:14 pm

  I'd like to share a personal story of how social media recently came to my rescue, highlighting an important opportunity for all you small businesses out there.  This Friday was really stressful.  I was up at 5:30 a.m. to prepare for the movers to come, followed by my cleaning service, all to turn my condo into a state fit for my new tenant in 24 hours!  That stress only increased when the cleaning service, slated to arrive between 3 and 5 p.m., still wasn't there at 4:50 p.m.  Their office couldn't get in touch with the ladies scheduled to clean my home and could give me…

• HubSpot TV - Swimming with the Fishes

  Rebecca Corliss

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:30 am

  HubSpot TV is LIVE every Friday at 4:00pm EST. Watch the show in real-time at www.hubspot.tv and chat with us via Twitter.  Episode #77 - January 29, 2010(Episode Length: 25 minutes, 11 seconds) Intro How to interact on Twitter: @karenrubin and @mvolpe with www.HubSpot.tv in your tweet. Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv Brian Halligan is speaking at the Franklin Club in Boston on Feb 1st at 6pm -- Cost $65 (Use coupon code hubspottv and save $10) Headlines Google Search Goes Social Search is getting more social"With Social Search, when we search for baby sleep patterns,…

• What Did Jane Austen Know About Social Media?

  Elizabeth Dunn

  5 Feb 2010 | 1:00 am

  With the final episode of Jane Austen's Emma airing on PBS this Sunday night, we've noticed that people are behaving a little bit more ... courtly to each other. Here's a handy guide to extending that exquisitely good behavior to the social media world. It is a truth universally acknowledged... that social media is being used by more and more businesses to engage meaningfully with their customers and to drive more qualified traffic to their sites. And while Jane Austen never blogged (she totally would have), or had a profile on Facebook, or posted status updates on Twitter, she…

• 
  MarketingProfs - Smart thinking ... pass it on.

• Five Simple Link-Building Tips

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  Link-building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. The process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link to your website. Spammy, automated products often never cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Doing it right means link-building by hand. ...

• Six Keys to Writing a Great Proposal

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  :ooking for ways to create a proposal that sets you and your company favorably apart? Ways that capture the great things you have to offer? Here are six suggested best-practices intended to not only maximize your chances to stand out and land the job but also manage the risks.

• Innovation Matters: Balancing Sustained vs. Disruptive Innovation

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  While we struggle to emerge from a full-blown recession, marketers know all too well that advertising and (unfortunately) innovation are the first budgets that are most likely to get cut. So how can marketers continue to innovate?

• 50% Click-Through Rates? Yes, You Can!

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  You'd think that to get half of your subscribers to click through, you might have to give away a million dollars every month. Publishers Clearing House actually does give away millions of dollars, but that wasn't enough on its own to earn a significantly higher-than-average response rate on its email ...

• Revamp to Revenue: Five Ways to Turn on the Profits With Your Website

  2 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  In the current economic climate, more business owners need to evaluate their website and revamp it to turn it into a presales tool, lead-generation machine, or even a revenue-producing cash cow. Can it be done? It just takes a few tweaks to turn on the profits.

• 
  Micro Persuasion

• Facebook Pulls Lexicon Analytics Tool

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:04 am

  Facebook has taken its promising Lexicon tool down from the site. Perhaps this happened when they pushed their new redesign. Lexicon, like Google Trends, provided limited yet interesting data on site-wide trends. You can read more about it here. From the Lexicon site.... "Thank you for your interest in Lexicon. We are removing the Lexicon product from Facebook for the time being. We may bring components of Lexicon back in the future, but we are focusing development on our analytics tools for Page owners, advertisers and Platform developers." Analytics remains a major focus…

• Trust in Friends Declines, Trust in Experts Rises - Social Media and PR Still Win

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:52 am

  Last week Edelman, my employer, published our tenth annual Trust Barometer study. You can read the full report here. One of the more juicy statistics that Advertising Age and others noted is that trust in peers surprisingly dropped dramatically from 47% to 27%. Tom Foremski says this is bad for PR: "This is bad news for PR agencies because social media has been the ‘point of the spear’ for so many firms. This is what brings in new business." While he's right that social media has been a big business driver, I respectfully disagree with Tom that this is bad news for the PR…

• Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:31 am

  Michael Arrington laments about about the decentralized nature of social content on TechCrunch today... "The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way. You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to "get religion," but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and -…

• Facebook Could Eat the Web

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:54 am

  Photo credit: mastermaq Like almost everyone else on the planet, it seems, I am spending more time on Facebook than any other site. The lone exception is Google. The reason I know this is that Safari, my browser, lists Facebook as my most visited site when I access its top sites feature. In addition to using Facebook to check in on what my family, friends and colleagues are up to, I have been using it as a newsreader for months. The screenshot below is my reader. This is something that the company suggested everyone do here. Although I suspect that most users haven't taken the steps…

• Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home

  3 Feb 2010 | 9:10 am

  The following is also my column in next week's issue of Advertising Age. Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home Photo credit: Traffic by scottpowerz The single biggest challenge that marketers face over the next ten years is attention scarcity. Bank on it. According to Andreas Weigland, Amazon.com's former chief scientist, more data was generated by individuals in 2009 than in the entire history of mankind. Human attention, however, is finite - and arguably, it shrinks as we age.  The end result is downright ugly. It's like 25 lanes of traffic trying to squeeze through two…

• 
  Technosailor.com

• Do Not Lock In To One Device Lest You Kill Your Company

  Aaron Brazell

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:26 am

  It’s funny. Comical even. A few weeks ago, I wrote that The iPhone is to Smartphones as IE6 was to Browsers. Most of the readers of that article agreed with me but almost all had a “but, but, but…” argument. This is because the iPhone is one sexy beast to users, even though AT&T can’t seem to support the iPhone, as we also noted. This is a comical observation because my position was endorsed (if not directly) by Peter-Paul Koch who daintily comments that “[He] will shout at web developers who think that delicately inserting an iPhone up their ass is the…

• HipHop, PHP, and the Evolution of Language

  Aaron Brazell

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:37 am

  A lively little discussion developed over the past few days on the DC-PHP developers mailing list. We have a very active developers group here in the DC area – much larger than most cities, in fact. Part of what makes our group great is the diversity of background and experience that is in the group. This was front and center over the past few days when one of our members, Hans, offered his opinions on Facebook’s new HipHop for PHP product. We have already expressed our intent to help make WordPress compliant with HipHop, something that will be beneficial to major WordPress sites…

• Facebook’s HipHop and What it Means to WordPress

  Aaron Brazell

  2 Feb 2010 | 10:42 am

  This was originally posted on my company blog and reposted here for posterity. By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP. Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that…

• WordPress Bible Release

  Aaron Brazell

  28 Jan 2010 | 7:52 am

  Last night, I got home to find my copies of the WordPress Bible at my door. This was tremendously exciting as I have been waiting for 8 months for this day. It was exciting and the buzz on Twitter has been tremendous. Pre-sale numbers were huge. The sharing and re-sharing of information about this book has been deafening. Below is a video of the unboxing. And of course, you can order the book today from Amazon and I hope you do. If not for the book, to support my efforts. Thanks to everyone who has stood by me during this process!

• The Greater Good: Entrepreneurship, Open Source, and a Better World

  Aaron Brazell

  22 Jan 2010 | 1:22 pm

  Last night, I was catching up with a friend who is as far from me in lifestyle outlook as you could possibly be. She is a extremely left wing type working for an environmental advocacy organization in DC. I, on the other hand, am an entrepreneur with one foot planted firmly on the right and one foot firmly planted on the left. The conversation came to an issue that I’ve only marginally thought in great detail about. I had made the comment about how I am potentially looking to leave the DC area because, as I put it, it’s not my scene. I feel like a square peg trying to be fit into…

• 
  Adrants

• Red Tettmer Gives Us Valentine's Day Sexting

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:54 am

  As we sit here, stranded and lonely, on a miserably cold and rainy day in a Doubletree hotel in Tampa, we'll take any form of excitement and warmth we can get.

• Hello Ladies. I'm on A Horse. And I Smell Like Old Spice

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 am

  In a witty jab at "smell like a lady" mens' fragrances, Old Spice whips out a full on man's man to tell us what real men are all about.

• In Ad Spoof, Google Kidnaps Steve Ballmer's Wife

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:38 am

  It's not like a spoof of the Google's Parisian ad which ran during the Super Bowl is any surprise. It's how funny it is that surprises.

• Chevrolet Makes Social Media-Style Road Trip to SXSW

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:45 am

  In a different kind of Movement, Chevrolet will send eight people on a road trip to Austin for SXSW.

• Adrants Makes Up Awards for Super Bowl Commercials

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:26 am

  Every year we talk about the Super Bowl. And not becasue it's a sport.

• 
  The Viral Garden

• Attention big brands, we had a blast on Twitter last nite, but where were you?

  Mack Collier

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  If you were on Twitter last nite during the Super Bowl, you probably had a blast with the rest of us participating in all the chatter around the game, and the commercials. Many of us were using the #brandbowl hashtag to critique the ads in real-time, in fact I was seeing 100 new tweets coming in every couple of minutes. For reference, that's about FOUR times the volume of a busy #blogchat.But one thing many of us noticed was that the companies buying these very expensive Super Bowl ads, weren't doing anything to engage with us. I didn't see a single ad with a reference to the company's social…

• Twitter-sourced smartitude; Getting a community site off the ground

  Mack Collier

  5 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  This morning I actually had a few minutes to spend on Twitter, so I decided to get a discussion going about community sites. More specifically, what's the first consideration when starting a site, how important is it to be involved in the site itself, and how to sell it to your boss. I got dozens of great answers, and here they are:First consideration when launching a community site:MattJMcD @MackCollier making sure people want to be part of your community in the first place. jonnytee @MackCollier first question - Who's the audience and what's their common interest? tamadear @MackCollier…

• #blogchat update for Feb - Music Marketing and Corporate Blogging!

  Mack Collier

  27 Jan 2010 | 8:40 am

  Big update for February as a couple of super smart co-hosts have agreed to join us for #blogchat.First, if aren't sure what #blogchat is, it's a chat that happens every Sunday nite on Twitter at 8pm Central. We talk about topics related to personal, professional and business blogging. Occasionally we stray off and talk about broader issues relating to social media, but for the most part we are blog-centric in our discussions.You can follow #blogchat on the web here or here, and you can get the background on how it came to be here.Now for the real news; after getting feedback from you guys in…

• #blogchat 1-24 recap; Dealing with and avoiding blogger burnout!

  Mack Collier

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:16 am

  First, if you missed #blogchat, here is the transcript.Second, if you have no idea what #blogchat is, it's a chat on Twitter that happens every Sunday nite at 8pm Central. We discuss a different topic every week that relates to blogging. EVERYONE is welcome to participate, and here's a good way to keep up with the chat on the web. If you have a Twitter account, you can join by adding the #blogchat hashtag to your tweets.Our topic this week was dealing with and avoiding blogger burnout. This is something that I've been dealing with from time to time, and from the #blogchat crowd, here are some…

• Case Study: How MarketingProfs uses Twitter

  Mack Collier

  22 Jan 2010 | 8:32 am

  Over on MackCollier.com this week we've had a fabulous discussion about what happens if your company has 1 person that's handling your social media strategy, and then they leave. In the post, I referenced how MarketingProfs does a great job leveraging Twitter to connect with its users.And then I got to thinking that other companies could definitely learn from what MP is doing with Twitter. So I fired off an email to Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs (and all-round superheroine in the true 70s SuperFriends sense of the word), and she quickly agreed to share with us the…

• 
  Being Peter Kim

• What you can learn from Forrester's new blogging policy

  Peter Kim

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:02 am

  I've been following the discussion around Forrester's new blogging policy. In case you weren't aware, I was formerly a Forrester analyst covering social computing and wrote some of the early drafts of the company's blogging policy. Now I'm building a strategy consulting practice at Dachis Group and advising companies on social business - wherein policies and guidelines play an important role. Based on my experience, I understand where Forrester's management is coming from. Forrester makes their money by curating information and social media poses a threat to its core intellectual property.

• Super Bust XLIV

  Peter Kim

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:08 am

  Outside of Indianapolis and New Orleans, most of the U.S. will have forgotten about Super Bowl XLIV by Monday evening.  Across the US, most of the ads were forgotten by the time viewers fell asleep Sunday night. Enough about how bad the ads were in general.  [Along with the halftime show.]  Many ads deserve their own special recognition and I'd like to highlight some of them here, by category. The violent:1. Snickers2. The movie/video game trailers 3. Doritos The sexually suggestive:1. GoDaddy2. CareerBuilder3. Motorola The heartstrings appeals:1. Google2. Coca-Cola3.

• Four years ago today

  Peter Kim

  28 Jan 2010 | 8:30 am

  I started this blog on a snowy Saturday in Boston, telling you about how I learned to love the blog. A lot has changed in social media since then. Curiously, my early posts are closer in style to tweets or posterizing than the long form that I publish here more often. Thanks for reading!

• Case Study: Managing Risk in Regulated Industries

  Peter Kim

  26 Jan 2010 | 7:00 am

  Common wisdom says that being a large company in a regulated industry somewhat forfeits your ability to conduct business in a social manner. There are just too many rules; it's just too risky. Right? There is some truth to this belief, but we think there are several ways to engage. Think of social engagement in phases, balanced by the risk and reward of each. Dachis Group recently finished an engagement with a client that operates in a regulated industry. We conducted a thorough analysis of their social media landscape and recommended several ways to move towards becoming a more social…

• The Marketer’s New Clothes

  Peter Kim

  12 Jan 2010 | 6:12 am

  Not too long ago there was a marketer, who was obsessively focused on “the next big thing” and spent a great deal of his budget on the latest fads; his only ambition was to be written up in Ad Age and Brandweek. He did not care for sales spreadsheets and customer databases did not interest him; the only thing that really interested him was to focus on the next brand campaign. The industry in which he worked was very social and every day many new agencies from around the world gave him a call. One day an agency came calling and let everyone know they were social media gurus and could build…

• 
  PR-Squared

• Social Media Abhors A Vacuum

  Todd Defren

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:07 am

  One of the issues that large brands must worry about — especially franchise brands — is IF and HOW local affiliates and employees decide to participate online. For example, take a look at a well-known brand like real estate giant Century 21. In addition to the official @C21realestate handle managed by Corp Comms in Parsippany, there are over 350 Century21 employees and/or franchisees on Twitter. Their Twitter handles range from @C21_SUNBELT to @Cntury21, from @Century21Seller to @RealtorToCall (and any number of @firstnamelastname combinations, i.e., no C21 affiliation). Some of these…

• Guess Who’s Talking: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas

  Todd Defren

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  Continuing our series on Social Media Ethical Dilemmas, this post is about the guidelines related to agencies who help client contacts to identify and engage, via commenting, on industry/influencer blogs. The goal is to insert our clients’ executives and perspectives into industry conversations; to help them build up their credibility, and ultimately to create valuable relationships with influencers. How do you do this?  How can you effectively inform and educate busy clients while also cultivating the bloggers’ goodwill in an authentic way? Here’s the general process… The Agency…

• Will RSS Fall to Apps?

  Todd Defren

  5 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  Several of my friends have launched iPhone apps recently.  (I am lookin’ at you, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Tamar Weinberg and C.C. Chapman.)  This is getting easier and easier to do, thanks to emergent services like Mobile Roadie and Motherapp. On the one hand, yea, I admit it, I smirked at each new announcement.  Felt a little too self-reverential.  Even Mitch Joel — no shrinking violet — called them “Golden Calf” apps. But I parleyed with C.C. about it, and read his post carefully.  His point is not lost on me: RSS is a tool of the elite; most folks surf their Bookmarks…

• SHIFT’s NYC PR Agency Debuts!

  Todd Defren

  3 Feb 2010 | 2:12 pm

  Last Thursday was a banner day for SHIFT, as we cut the ribbon at the opening of  our NYC office.  We celebrated in style, ‘natch, with a party that included everyone from SavvyAuntie Melanie Notkin, to reporters from the Wall Street Journal, PRWeek, MediaBistro and RealSimple, to venture capitalists, and many more friends and colleagues.  Full-house.  Raucous and fun. David Parmet of Marketing Begins at Home probably did the best job of capturing the “real me” — an unmatched combination of goofiness and ego.  I half-drunkenly stumbled out onto our NYC…

• Trail of Breadcrumbs

  Todd Defren

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:20 am

  A new survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that “an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories.” Specifically, “89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.” Per the news release: While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream…

• 
  The Harte of Marketing

• Getting Management Buy-In For Integrated Marketing & Communications

  Anna Barcelos and Beth Harte

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

  There are a lot of marketers out there that understand that integrated marketing and communications (IMC) is a preferred way to do business because it is an outside-in approach. If an organization isn’t integrated, what are the best approaches to getting management buy-in? Anna Barcelos and I wanted to share nine key ways to provide management with the value of IMC. Sales-Oriented Vs. Market-Oriented – Which Are You? It’s often been said that the mindset of “If we build it, they will come” is not viable for long term business. To understand why, let’s look at the difference…

• Integrated Marketing & Communications, Redux

  Beth Harte

  19 Jan 2010 | 5:50 am

  The hiatus is over! For those who have been loyal readers of this blog, Happy New Year! And I thank you for hanging in there with me while I took the time to consider where to head next.    For a long time I focused on marketing, PR and social media, but rarely the integration of them all. The focus of The Harte of Marketing for 2010 (and perhaps beyond) will be integrated marketing & communications. While integrated marketing communications (IMC) is nothing new, the embracing of social media surely puts IMC back in the spotlight as its principles are similar to long-standing IMC…

• An Unscientific Test of Authenticity & Transparency: How Much Do They Really Matter?

  Beth Harte

  30 Sep 2009 | 8:04 pm

  Although my blog is technically on “hiatus,” I felt this post was too important to not post it here (versus my digital marketing notebook on Posterous). I am still thinking about the direction my blog will be heading, but I know one thing for sure…it will include a lot more analysis, testing, and less opinion.  As a marketer, testing is at the heart of what we do (or should do) and I for one have been lax when it comes to testing social media. Without testing all aspects of social media, we are, unfortunately, arguing from ignorance.  The first test: Authenticity,…

• Putting myself on a time out.

  Beth Harte

  28 Aug 2009 | 11:19 am

  I wrote a really verbose post, but a good friend told me that what I had written didn’t sound like me (you know who you are…thank you again!). So, here’s take two.  This past year has been truly exceptional and while I love blogging, I am not a writer. So from that regard, I struggle. I know this is *my* blog and I can do with it what I’d like, but I also don’t want to produce crap content. I have SO many thoughts rattling around in my head but the pressure to make them perfect stops me from writing them down. And the time to make them perfect doesn’t…

• Gardening…The Social Media Way

  Beth Harte

  12 Aug 2009 | 6:34 am

  Teresa Basich and I teamed up to write this post after discussing David Armano’s post. Teresa kicked off a group conversation by asking the insightful question “Now, what could we add to David’s blueprint beginnings?”  Teresa wrote 3/4 of this post, so if you like the way her uber-smart brain works, be sure to check out her blog,  Overcommunicated, too. Back in June David Armano of Dachis Corporation had an interesting post on debunking social media myths featured on the Conversation Starters blog of the Harvard Business Review. David discussed how organizations…

• 
  B.L. Ochman's blog

• Hey Old Spice and Time Warner! You were the laughing stock of social media week new york

  BL Ochman

  7 Feb 2010 | 8:05 pm

  Old Spice was the laughing stock of Social Media Week New York when I showed this horrific photo from their lameass Residue is Evil campaign. Time Warner was close behind on the lousy campaign laugh meter. As I noted back in August 2009: "Ok, I'm not a 18 to 25 year-old man, so I'm not the demographic for the Old Spice Deodorant's Swagger contest. Nonetheless, I've never seen a more confused, obtuse, badly designed contest than the one that starts on this annoying page and gets weirder and harder to use from there. They've included their slickly produced commercials as examples, which rather,…

• Toyota: Way too little, way too late & what they should have done

  BL Ochman

  7 Feb 2010 | 9:26 am

  The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c

• #socialmedia Tweet Chat #45 - The fear factor: Shift Happens

  BL Ochman

  2 Feb 2010 | 8:05 pm

  I am immersed in Social Media Week New York, and wanted to share some of the highlights of my travels today. The theme of the day: Shift happens. Tweet Chatting with Borders Free WiFi Since there was no wifi at the new media conference I was covering today, (!?) I ended up at Borders, where the coffee was great, and the wifi was free, (thank you Borders!) so I could host the 45th edition of the hour-long weekly Twitter Social Media chat, produced by hashtagsocialmedia.com's Marc Meyer and Jason Breed. Just about everyone who's anyone in emerging media has hosted and/or participated in the…

• Thistle Farms: Marketing With Hope, Love & Social Media

  BL Ochman

  31 Jan 2010 | 7:31 pm

  Sometimes, the use of social media is a rather frivolous afterthought in marketing campaigns. In the case of Magdelene House and Thistle Farms, hope, love, and social media sell redemption. Let them show you what social media really can do. Last week, I went to a house party for Thistle Farms, a non-profit business operated by the women of Magdalene House, a two-year residential program for women who are recovering from sexual abuse, violence, and life on the streets, and who have paid dearly for their past. The party was held to celebrate the start of Magdelene's 10-city tour of prisons,…

• 2010 Social Media Week NYC: My Schedule & Recommended Events

  BL Ochman

  31 Jan 2010 | 6:27 pm

  Social Media Week NYC kicks off Monday and scores of events - almost all aimed at newbies - are planned. I'm speaking at three events this week - one online and two at the Roger Smith Hotel. Details are below along with several other events that look interesting. Where I'm speaking 1- Social Media Tweet Chat Tuesday, Feb 2 noon-1pm EST on Twitter I'll moderate a conversation on Twitter about the business of social media. These Twitter chats have been moderated by a stellar array of social media luminaries including my friends Scott Monty, Ann Handley, Shel Israel, Charlene Li, Brian Solis,…

• 
  Six Pixels of Separation

• This Will Change Everything... Again

  Mitch Joel

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:50 am

  What do you make of articles that say, "this will change everything for Marketers?" The truth is, I'm just as guilty as the next Journalist, Blogger and Writer to publish thoughts like that. The truth is, those types of sayings and thoughts are popping up in every form of media a lot more often these days. The truth is, it's true. We tend to lump everything we see in the digital channels as "Social Media" and it's probably one of the biggest disservices we can do to the online channels and platforms. YouTube is nothing like Twitter and Twitter is nothing like Facebook, yet…

• Marketers Miss The Mark With Twitter

  Mitch Joel

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:19 pm

  How long has it been since we had a, "Twitter is dead" article? AdWeek published the article, The Tweet Hereafter, yesterday and it will probably make no sense to any Marketer who sees any of the Social Media platforms as something more than just another advertising channel. "Like Second Life, Twitter has become a wasteland for brands. Verizon, a company that spent more than $1 billion on advertising in 2009, has around 5,000 followers -- about 0.3 percent the amount that Perez Hilton has. Coca-Cola has 15,000. Apple's not even on Twitter. And some corporate Twitter accounts…

• Measuring Real Success Online With Google's Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik

  Mitch Joel

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:22 am

  Episode #189 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. Seth Godin wrote a seminal book called, All Marketers Are Liars. Avinash Kaushik tells us about how marketing connects and how to measure it in such a practical and real way, that some Marketers can't stand the honesty that comes out of his mouth. Maybe Kaushik should write a book called, Some Marketers Hate Avinash Kaushik? Along with being the Analytics Evangelist for Google (and Blogger over at Occam's Razor), Kaushik is also the best-selling author of two books, Web Analytics -…

• There Is Nothing Wrong With Making Money

  Mitch Joel

  6 Feb 2010 | 12:11 pm

  For some reason, no one in Social Media is really allowed to make any money. It's verboten. It's against the community spirit. It's the wrong thing to do. That's just, plain stupid. Yes, the new digital channels are primed for those who are looking to connect, communicate and engage in conversations, but if there is no benefit in the end, then all is lost. For some, that end benefit will be dollars in the bank, for others it will be social capital (check out Tara Hunt's amazing book, The Whuffie Factor, for more on that), for some it will be the growth of their personal brand (which in turn…

• What Motivates You?

  Mitch Joel

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:26 pm

  There are some people who do the heavy lifting when it comes to thinking about why human beings do the things we do. Dan Pink (aka Daniel H. Pink) is one of those thinkers. He's the author of some of the best (and best-selling) business books like Free Agent Nation, A Whole New Mind, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko (the first American business book done in Japanese manga) and his recently-released hit, Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Here's how his Blog describes Drive: "Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch…

• 
  Seth Godin

• TEDthink

  Seth Godin

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  Can you factor this? If you're like most people, you get a little queasy at the thought. And when you were in tenth grade, you surely wondered why they were bothering you.(the answer is (x-2) times (x-2), in case you were curious.)It turns out that the real reason you needed to do this work was to be able to play with numbers in your head. Abstract numerical thought is an important skill among educated people.Which brings us to TED, a conference held every year in Long Beach. It's going on right now. Watch a few TED videos and try to get ahead of the speaker. They have an idea...it's probably…

• Frightened, clueless or uninformed?

  Seth Godin

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:57 am

  In the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three. If you're going to be of assistance, it helps to know which one.Uninformed people need information and insight in order to figure out what to do next. They are approaching the problem with optimism and calm, but they need to be taught. Uninformed is not a pejorative term, it's a temporary state.Clueless people don't know what to do and they don't know that they don't know what to do. They don't know the right questions to ask. Giving them instructions is insufficient. First, they need to be sold on what the…

• The least I could do

  Seth Godin

  7 Feb 2010 | 3:35 am

  One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That's actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings... what's the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.Of course, there's a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the…

• iPad app of my dreams: the digital talking pad

  Seth Godin

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:10 am

  Here's the spec. If you build it and it's great, I'll use it and I'll blog it.A while ago, I posted about the talking pad and a modern version of it.I think there's a killer app version of this for the iPad, and I hope someone will build it. The talking pad is an interactive presentation tool for smart people.OverviewIt's a very simple concept: a collection of pages (slides, images, type, let's call them pages) that are easy to navigate in a non-linear way. Along with the standard zoom features, I'd like to be able to write on any of them in real time using my finger. I can also call up, on…

• The relentless search for "tell me what to do"

  Seth Godin

  6 Feb 2010 | 2:26 am

  If you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."When asked, resist.

• 
  The Altimeter by Charlene Li

• Welcome to new Altimeter Group partners: Alan Webber and Lora Cecere

  charleneli

  26 Jan 2010 | 10:00 am

  I’m pleased to announce that Altimeter Group has brought on two additional partners to meet the growing demand of our clients, which now number over 40 retained clients. Alan Webber and Lora Cecere each bring with them unique areas of expertise, but what makes them great partners for Altimeter is their ability to help clients understand and address opportunities and problems created by emerging technologies. Trends such as open government and supply chain/demand orchestration disrupt traditional business and organizational models, creating both problems as well as opportunities. We…

• “Socialgraphics” webinar slides and recording now available

  charleneli

  20 Jan 2010 | 11:59 pm

  Thanks to everyone who attended the webinar we held today on “Understanding Your Customers’ Social Behaviors“. Many people wanted to attend the webinar but weren’t able to because of schedule conflicts. So we’re making the slides and a video recording (slides and audio) available here. You can also download from Slideshare.net (for slides) and drop.io (for the recording). Also, there was a vibrant conversation taking place on sites like Twitter, using the hashtag #socialgraphics (for search of just the tweets on the day of the Webiner, use this link). Understand…

• Webinar introducing "Socialgraphics", a customer-centric approach to social strategy

  charleneli

  11 Jan 2010 | 6:16 pm

  Jeremiah Owyang and I will be running a free Webinar introducing how we are thinking about how companies can understand their customers through what we are calling "socialgraphics". To register for the Webinar: Register for Free Webinar: Understand Your Customers’ Social Behaviors, Hosted by Altimeter Group Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM PST Beware of plans or proposals that start with “Twitter Strategy” or “Facebook Strategy” Instead, they should have a “Customer Strategy” that focuses in on how customers behave…

• From the Cockpit: Altimeter Updates

  jeremiah

  2 Dec 2009 | 4:21 pm

  From time to time, we want to keep our community updated with what’s happening at the Altimeter Group, we’re continuing to grow, having fun, and will have more announcements in the upcoming future.  Here’s a partial snapshot of the partners progress to date: Ray has taken on new clients focused on the Social CRM space, and continues to be a global traveler, keynoting the SAP user group conference in UK and France.  He was recently accepted as the latest member of the Enterprise Irregulars, a collection of the top minds in the Enterprise Software Market. Deborah has…

• Saleforce.com integrates social with Chatter launch

  charleneli

  18 Nov 2009 | 6:21 am

  At its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com announced the launch of Chatter Collaboration Cloud. On the surface, it may look like merely Twitter integrated deeply into Salesforce.com’s offerings, but it’s really a social platform that can integrate multiple inputs that will accelerate the opening up of enterprise applications. I was pre-briefed about the announcement, so will walk you through major highlights and also discuss a few implications. Overview Chatter Collaboration Cloud reflects a recent expansion in Salesforce.com’s offering, continuing where Sales Cloud 2,…

• 
  John Battelle

• The Tuesday Signal

  http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:20 am

  Tuesday, we hope, things will get back to normal after Super Bowl fever had subsided. Google is set to turn Gmail into a status updatin' machine, which positions it to compete directly with Twitter. I'll be posting this Signal an hour or so before the details emerge. I have an FM Board meeting this morning, (don't fear, it's all good...). So click this link for news of Google's Gmail moves.   Meanwhile, the past 24 hours has brought, as usual, all manner of linkworthy schtuff: Loopt and Mobile Spinach Team Up for Location-Based Deals (Mashable) I'm watching this space. Hence the…

• A Google Twitter Killer? Not Till Google Mutates

  http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:53 am

  That's the rumor (BI via WSJ). The idea is to let Gmail become your portal into status update.   It won't work, period, unless it connects to Facebook and Twitter. And so far, as I've pointed out before, Google won't do that, at least, not yet, and and certainly not in the way it should be done. Google is simply not understood by consumers to be a place where they can connect with friends and colleagues. If it intends to become that, it has some DNA mutation in its future. This one should be interesting.  

• The Monday Signal: Monday Morn. Advertising Quarterback

  http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:51 am

  Was it really as simple as that? Google CEO Eric Schmidt took to the blogwaves after the Super Bowl yesterday to explain Google's surprising decision to purchase an ad thusly: We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience. If there's one thing Google's consistent about, it's the company's approach to PR: it always sounds…

• Updated: Google to Air "Search Stories" Ad During Super Bowl...

  http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

  6 Feb 2010 | 3:11 pm

  Remember when I wrote about the new "Search Stories" ads for Google's core search offerings?In that post, I noted "It's truly a brand campaign: Google is not selling anything here other than its own brand - that ephemeral sensibility that resides between its customers' ears." Well I've got a pretty reliable source who is telling me Google plans to hit the branded advertising big leagues this Sunday - the source says Google's "Parisian Love" ad (below) will air during the third quarter of the Super Bowl. Now that would be a true turning point for the brand - a brand that, for nearly ten years,…

• The Friday Signal: It's The Platform, Not the Bowl

  http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

  5 Feb 2010 | 8:35 am

  Friday is all about the biggest event in television marketing - the Super Bowl. This year (as I've noted here before) I'm struck by how many campaigns are integrated with longer term social marketing platforms. That's putting the investment to good use - promoting what I call a media annuity that will pay back all year long. However, much of the press and some of the marketing still gets it backwards - they see the Super Bowl as something that social media "builds buzz for." Nope. It's the other way round, folks. Your brand, which after all is what you're buying the ad for, right? - your…

• 
  John Jantsch

• PR is Only Dying If It Isn’t Evolving

  John Jantsch

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:51 am

  SharePR is Only Dying If It Isn’t EvolvingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Brian Solis (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I asked Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks and co-author of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, about the future of the PR industry as we know it. There’s plenty of doom and gloom surrounding the practice of public relations in the social web world, but Solis suggests, and I totally agree, that there’s a…

• 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer

  John Jantsch

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:33 am

  Share5 Questions You Should Ask Every CustomerThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Constantly seeking feedback from your customers is a great way to learn how to market your business more effectively. If you’ve never done this before, do it immediately as it is one of the best ways to discover what you do that actually differentiates you from your competition. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with a small business that had no idea what its competitive advantage was until we heard it right from the mouths of happy customers. Seeking feedback is also a great way…

• Weekend Favs February Six

  John Jantsch

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:14 am

  ShareWeekend Favs February SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week) Image credit: Dr Swan Enjoy! Good stuff I ran across this week: Siri – An iPhone app that acts like a personal assistant – you can ask to find things by name – nearest Starbucks or by broad category –…

• Extending Your Presentations Through the Backchannel

  John Jantsch

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:18 am

  ShareExtending Your Presentations Through the BackchannelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing The term “backchannel” was coined in the field of Linguistics in the 1970’s to describe listeners’ behaviors during verbal communication. It is commonly used these days to describe the behavior or conversation going on in social media while a speaker is making a presentation. In some conferences the majority of the people listening may be actively Tweeting throughout a speech. Like it or not, managing the backchannel has become a part of presenting, in person or online.

• Analytics from a Really Smart Guy

  John Jantsch

  4 Feb 2010 | 1:19 pm

  Analytics from a Really Smart GuyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Avinash Kaushik (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 is one of those rare people who can take a somewhat dry and mathlike subject of web analytics and make it sound easy and even fun. I got to spend a few minutes with Avinash for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast for some tips about this important, but often overlooked topic. Web Analytics can seem like a scary subject, but it’s…

• 
  Tom Peters

• Link Roundup #12

  Shelley Dolley

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:20 am

  Keller Graduate School of Management has an online roundtable discussion series on how "businesses of any size can encourage an environment of corporate entrepreneurship." The Job Search Difficulty Index "measures the difficulty of finding a job" either by state or major U.S. city. For January, as I'm sure you can guess, Michigan was the the most difficult state in which to find a job. With the current state of the job market, many people are turning to self-employment. Reader Stephen Garner pointed us to How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo from the Wall Street Journal. If you're as…

• Leadership: The Problem Isn't the Problem

  Cathy Mosca

  3 Feb 2010 | 2:16 pm

  Tom argues that the reaction to the problem often becomes more of a problem than the original misstep would have been if dealt with honestly. As he's been known to say: "Foul up. Fess up. Fast. Fastidiously." You can watch the 2:10 minute video on YouTube and, if you like, download a PDF of its transcript.

• Scary!

  Tom Peters

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:59 am

  Scariest start of an article award 2010, from yesterday's New York Times: "China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may…

• The Fortune Guy Is the One With the Problem

  Tom Peters

  28 Jan 2010 | 12:22 pm

  There's a Fortune article on a Goldman guy who quit. ("The Man Who Walked Away from Goldman Sachs," William Cohan, 0208.10.) The Goldman guy was worried about Goldman doing a header like Lehman. The Fortune guy wrote: ""If Goldman's stock went to zero as Lehman Brothers' had ... then Winkelried's decades of hard work would be vaporized in the blip of a Bloomberg screen." What a horror. Namely, the fact that the Fortune guy could produce that sentence, presumably with no sense of irony. Suppose my net worth was 100.000% wiped out this morning. I would be unhappy. Very unhappy. But ... But…

• What is Excellence?

  Seth Godin

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:59 am

  [Our guest blogger is Seth Godin, who needs no further introduction here. We'd like to thank him very much for this, his first post at tompeters.com.] Twenty-five years ago, my life (and yours, too, probably) was changed by Tom and Bob's book, In Search of Excellence. After that, on a regular basis, Tom has provided us with shots of brilliance and unsettling reminders that we've got a long way to go to reach our potential as organizations and individuals. Along the way, there's a question that's been nibbled at but never really answered. I mean, I already know many of the 687 ways to create…

• 
  Brian Solis

• The State of Social Media Around the World 2010

  brian

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 am

  If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating…

• The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing

  brian

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:14 am

  Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten…

• Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet

  brian

  3 Feb 2010 | 4:42 am

  Sounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.According to the report, Apple’s iTunes + iPhone/Touch ecosystem…

• The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search

  brian

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:57 am

  In 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age.The opportunities…

• Who is the ME in Social Media?

  brian

  29 Jan 2010 | 4:11 am

  Good friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on…

• 
  Conversation Agent

• How I Participate in Social Networks

  Valeria Maltoni

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  I'm borrowing a page off the Communicatrix blog to lay out how I participate in social networks. Why? Because we all have a different strategy to how we spend our time and energy to be social and to achieve our goals and since we have a strategy, in the spirit of social, we should make it transparent. [hat tip to Skip Shuda for suggesting it]I've been getting more than many requests from several people in many networks lately. Requests to friend, requests to tweet, to forward, to bookmark, to stumble, the list goes on. Being online for the best part of my day makes me very accessible. That I…

• Are You Customer-Averse?

  Valeria Maltoni

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  We all know the story of how Comcast went from customer-averse to customer-friendly. It started online with a person, and it's making its way to the rest of the organization. You will agree with me that Comcast went from this episode, to this action, to this thinking. They went from customer-averse, to customer-friendly. It didn't happen overnight, still it did. Competition helps, too, so we keep our fingers crossed on any one company getting too big to care.Businesses continue to look for more ways to get new business either from new or current customers -- usually both, in this order. Shiny…

• Trust in Media Down, Good News for Experts

  Valeria Maltoni

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Trust in business and Government has gone up in the last year, while trust in media seems to be declining across the board -- this is the latest finding of the latest annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey. Take a look at the executive report and see that:Trust in traditional media is trending downward: TV news dropped by 20 points radio news dropped by 17 points print news dropped by 12 points Trust in digital media is still pretty low, and although corporate communications are trending higher than social networks, they're still not that high.We've all witnessed the decline of stretched news…

• The Future Online is Subscription-Based: Why I Joined Third Tribe

  Valeria Maltoni

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Clearly, the title left out a few pieces of information. I believe there is still a future online for free, but increasingly, the way to get things done, to go from conversation to agent, is subscription-based. Why? Accountability, resources, self-selected network, and opportunity to syndicate service, for a fee.The service for a fee model interests me most. That's why I joined Third Tribe as a member this week. The whole velvet rope community concept should make brands pay attention. This is not just a build a community to push your products, or just engage customers in your stuff kind of…

• We Still Get Things Done Through Search

  Valeria Maltoni

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  With all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to: help conversions connect to value build relationships extend to influentials engage via education They are all outcomes I've had the opportunity to experience and…

• 
  OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN

• Take Steps to Minimize the Pain of Small Business Taxes

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:28 am

  From Denise O'Berry: As we turned the corner into the New Year, that meant the start of the clock for tax filing season. Small business owners complain a lot about taxes. But the issue is typically about all of the filing requirements – all the things you have to do that give you major heartburn. There are so many tax related activities required for small business that the IRS publishes a small business tax calendar every year. It’s a really useful tool that is normally released during the fourth quarter of the year. It’s out of stock now, but you can still view a handy…

• Put an End to Lost Marketing Opportunities

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:16 am

  From Mark Stevens: The marketing myth holds that it's better to do something, even if it produces mediocre results, than to do nothing at all. Nonsense. Engaging in marketing initiatives that don't produce a high return on investment waste your money and, equally important, keep the money from being invested in far more productive uses. This raises an important but often overlooked point: The highest costs any business faces are not those traditionally accounted for--labor, materials, rent, etc.--but opportunity. What the company fails to capitalize on takes the highest toll. How does this…

• 8 Financial Considerations of Ecommerce

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

  From Gregory Go: Selling products online uses the same basic principles and strategies as offline (or "brick & mortar") retailing. Provide a good product, at a reasonable price, with some exceptional customer service. Buy low, sell high. Repeat and profit. Online retailing involves the same principles, but the tactics and mechanics are different. Here's a look at 8 facets of ecommerce that will affect your retail business' finances and processes. 1. Lower prices When you’re the only widget seller within 10 miles, you can charge list prices. When you’re competing online in a…

• How to Avoid Gullibility

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:34 pm

  From Guy Kawasaki: Who among us have not fallen for a stupid idea, pitch, or proposal? At some level, we’re all gullible where “gullibility” is defined as “an unusual tendency toward being duped or taken advantage of.” Fortunately, Stephen Greenspan has written a book called Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. In the conclusion of his book, Greenspan explains how to become less gullible: Don’t rush big decisions. When we make big decisions in a rush or when we are exhausted, they tend to be bad ones. We have to decide few things…

• What Super Bowl Advertising Can Teach Your Small Business

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:48 pm

  From Rohit Bhargava: How many of you reading this article have an extra $2.6 million lying around to spend on a single TV ad? That was the price tag this year to place a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl on CBS. To a small business owner, several words probably come to mind when thinking about those brands that did spend this kind of money on a single ad. Irresponsible comes to mind. Wasteful is likely somewhere in there too. Certainly a word that probably doesn't come to mind at all is strategic. After all, it's tough to imagine a talking baby or a house made out of beer cans having any…

• 
  Neuromarketing

• Cookie Framing

  Roger Dooley

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:34 am

  Years ago, when The Tonight Show ruled late-night TV and when all the guests weren’t celebrities promoting their latest book, movie, or TV show, host Johnny Carson interviewed the Girl Scout who sold the most cookies that year. This young lady, Markita Andrews, set a cookie-sales record that has yet to be broken. [...] CommentsThe title of this post caught my eye immediately when it popped ... by Jon

• Post-Super Bowl Briefing

  Roger Dooley

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:36 am

  Very soon, we will be subjected to a variety of neuromarketing-based opinions on which Super Bowl 2010 ads worked, and which didn’t. While we are awaiting these analyses, I thought I’d point readers at a good article on one kind of neuromarketing study methodology by WIRED writer Alexis Madrigal. It’s accurate, largely devoid [...] CommentsHi Roger- Thanks for the post. You are correct that we are in ... by Ron Wright

• Neuromarketing Foes Use Subliminal Text?

  Roger Dooley

  2 Feb 2010 | 5:08 am

  Yesterday I wrote about the latest anti-neuromarketing flap in Guard Your Reptilian Brain! While researching that post, I found an interesting spinoff at another site, Progressives, South Bend. I initially couldn’t find the text “neuromarketing” on that page. When I searched the page text, I found what looked like a short horizontal [...] CommentsGreat catch Roger. As someone very famous once said : Judgment ... by christophe morinhahaha, and I even mentioned subliminals in my comment ... by Sculptor?!?Plus 2 more...

• Guard Your Reptilian Brain!

  Roger Dooley

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:28 am

  Every year or so, some fuzzy-thinking critic reads an article about neuromarketing, becomes extremely agitated, and tries to raise the alarm about marketers turning consumers into mind-controlled zombies. The latest push of the neuro-panic button began with an article on a site called Truthout (fresh out of truth, perhaps?). Truthout seems to be a [...] CommentsThe writers from Truthout are not fully aware that the ... by CindyLet's be fair. To those who don't understand something, it's ... by Brendon ClarkPlus 7 more...

• WIRED Throwing Biometric Super Bowl Party

  Roger Dooley

  29 Jan 2010 | 10:21 am

  Every year, there is a burst of neuromarketing-related activity coinciding with the Super Bowl. After all, that game features commercials that people actually watch, and the cost of airing each ad is the highest of any program throughout the entire year. One staple of Super Bowl Sunday is the party – millions will [...] Comments*reposted to my blog* Thanks Roger! by CindyI am a fan of neuroscience and marketing and am glad that there ... by CindyPlus 2 more...

• 
  Make the Logo Bigger

• And CBS passed on this?

  mtlb

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 am

  Shocking. I mean, Super Bail has a catchy tune and a family-friendly kid. Fox would’ve run it.

• Old Spice Kills. Owns. Rules.

  mtlb

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:10 am

  Another Super Bowl spot that wasn’t? Attacking the genre of mens’ healthcare products yet again, Old Spice would’ve cleaned up if they had actually run this during the game. Next to Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man, there’s no better Real Man™ spoof campaign running. (Doritos giving the *pros* a run for their money? HA! Yeah. Whatever.)(Via.)

• Before the Super Bowl, under the radar, over the hype.

  mtlb

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:45 am

  Another ad that *technically* could pass for a Super Bowl spot even though it ran just before the game. Paying homage to the classic Jordan v. Byrd battles of years past, McDonald’s updated the campaign with LeBron James and Dwight Howard. Did it hold up? Not sure. The banter between them felt more real than the old stuff, but the cgi... er, jams felt a little too anything but. If you watch enough dunk competitions, there are only so many dunks you can try. Not that Jordan’s “Over the river...” scenario was believable, but in that context, the absurdity works. Here, focusing only on…

• You’re a quart low.

  mtlb

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:05 am

  Arla ecological cottage cheese has virtual cow udders. I guess it beats going door to door squirting people with a real cow. Now, go have fun.(By Perfect Fools.)

• The flyover country edition

  mtlb

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:54 am

  The pre-Super Bowl hype edition was recorded before the game, which means we didn’t say much about it, much. The flyover reference comes from the thought that more creatives should spend time with their audience viewing the final product while it runs, instead of listening to focus groups and planners before the concept stage. Keeps you grounded; least it does me. Toyota gets an ass kicking for its PR moves, while Second Life gets a second chance along with Foursquare (the latter two being two max-hype trends I just can’t get behind.) Jim Mitchem of Smash Communications, Dirk Singer of…

• 
  PR2.0

• The State of Social Media Around the World 2010

  brian

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 am

  If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating…

• The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing

  brian

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:14 am

  Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten…

• Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet

  brian

  3 Feb 2010 | 4:42 am

  Sounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.According to the report, Apple’s iTunes + iPhone/Touch ecosystem…

• The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search

  brian

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:57 am

  In 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age.The opportunities…

• Who is the ME in Social Media?

  brian

  29 Jan 2010 | 4:11 am

  Good friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on…

• 
  Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

• PR is Only Dying If It Isn’t Evolving

  John Jantsch

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:51 am

  SharePR is Only Dying If It Isn’t EvolvingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Brian Solis (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I asked Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks and co-author of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, about the future of the PR industry as we know it. There’s plenty of doom and gloom surrounding the practice of public relations in the social web world, but Solis suggests, and I totally agree, that there’s a…

• 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer

  John Jantsch

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:33 am

  Share5 Questions You Should Ask Every CustomerThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Constantly seeking feedback from your customers is a great way to learn how to market your business more effectively. If you’ve never done this before, do it immediately as it is one of the best ways to discover what you do that actually differentiates you from your competition. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with a small business that had no idea what its competitive advantage was until we heard it right from the mouths of happy customers. Seeking feedback is also a great way…

• Weekend Favs February Six

  John Jantsch

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:14 am

  ShareWeekend Favs February SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week) Image credit: Dr Swan Enjoy! Good stuff I ran across this week: Siri – An iPhone app that acts like a personal assistant – you can ask to find things by name – nearest Starbucks or by broad category –…

• Extending Your Presentations Through the Backchannel

  John Jantsch

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:18 am

  ShareExtending Your Presentations Through the BackchannelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing The term “backchannel” was coined in the field of Linguistics in the 1970’s to describe listeners’ behaviors during verbal communication. It is commonly used these days to describe the behavior or conversation going on in social media while a speaker is making a presentation. In some conferences the majority of the people listening may be actively Tweeting throughout a speech. Like it or not, managing the backchannel has become a part of presenting, in person or online.

• Analytics from a Really Smart Guy

  John Jantsch

  4 Feb 2010 | 1:19 pm

  Analytics from a Really Smart GuyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Avinash Kaushik (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 is one of those rare people who can take a somewhat dry and mathlike subject of web analytics and make it sound easy and even fun. I got to spend a few minutes with Avinash for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast for some tips about this important, but often overlooked topic. Web Analytics can seem like a scary subject, but it’s…

• 
  Business is Personal

• Shredding mad pow in my driveway

  Mark

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:07 am

  photo credit: Sabbath Photography So far it’s been an incredible year for snow in the Northwest. Two feet in the Washington DC area is a Snowpocalypse? That’s nothing. We have 8 feet of fresh pow* in Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. It’s so deep, we’re cutting mad turns in our driveways and carrying avalanche beacons when we go out to get the mail. Come out and join us and ski and ride your brains out! Oh wait. Maybe not that much snow, but come on out anyhow. Which truth is real? As with other markets where misinformation can lead a customer astray, the internet…

• Little, inexpensive things mean a lot

  Mark

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:54 am

  photo credit: Dennis Wong What transforms an experience from “acceptable” to “cant wait to tell my friends”? To me, “acceptable” service starts with a smile, an effort to make sure the customer received what they came for, eye contact and a thank you. “Can’t wait to tell my friends” service doesn’t come *before* you do little inexpensive things, it comes *because of* little inexpensive things. That’s right – the things that transform your service to “cant wait to tell my friends” are often simple, inexpensive…

• The Social Media Scoreboard

  Mark

  6 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  photo credit: shoothead You’ve probably seen people on Twitter or Facebook yammering about “Wow, I only need 17 more followers or fans to hit 2000″ (or  10000 or whatever). If you’ve used Twitter, you know that there’s a curve there and when you round it, it’s like drinking from a firehose. Stowe Boyd talks a little about the social media scoreboard in today’s guest post, stating that quality rather than quantity is the important factor. Remember that each of those fans or followers are people. They have needs, wants and presumably they…

• How’s that 2010 working for ya so far?

  Mark

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:19 am

  photo credit: mark sebastian Did January sneak up and run out the door on you? 2010 is 1/12th GONE. So, with a 1/12 of your year gone, how’s your 2010 going? If you got a slow start, maybe a simple exercise will get you back on track. Simple doesn’t mean ineffective, simple means uncluttered. Down to the bare metal, if you wish. The goal is not to make this the best planning session ever, it’s to get you back on track and moving toward the right goal so that your next planning session has you standing there with a success in your holster, fired up to kick some butt. In other…

• The size of the mountain doesn’t matter

  Mark

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:16 pm

  photo credit: Alex E. Proimos A combination of events over the last couple of months has had me thinking more about the expectations we have for ourselves, our kids, our employees and holy moly, even our politicians. First, Jim Rohn passed away. Jim talked a lot about expectations and how delivery of them is on one person – you. I highly recommend Rohn’s stuff. While you can buy his books, videos, audio etc online, quite a lot can be found at no cost on his site and on YouTube. Next, four of my Scouts attained the rank of Eagle on the same day, after progressing together in Scouting…

• 
  Web Ink Now

• Mumbai taxis and Apple MacBook Pros are really quite similar

  David Meerman Scott

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:40 am

  As I was strolling the streets of Bombay (Mumbai), India, I noticed that the taxicabs are the same make of car, yet the owners of the cabs have personalized them with stickers and other do-dads to make them unique. It got me thinking of other things that are commonly personalized such as MacBook Pro computers like mine. Anyway, I made this very short video to show you what I mean. It is less than a minute. Direct link to the video here.

• How to crowdsource videos for your company

  David Meerman Scott

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:44 am

  Wouldn’t it be cool if people created videos for you? Perhaps like HP, you could hold a contest to get students to put forward their best efforts. The contest was simple. "Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive." This video filmed, edited and directed by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth for the contest is just terrific. Please take a just 80 seconds to watch this amazing video. Direct link to HP Invent video by Matt and Tom here. While in Amsterdam this past week, I met Jan-Paul de Beer of BrandFighters, a company…

• Enjoying a brand called Brand while listening to a Ramones tribute band

  David Meerman Scott

  6 Feb 2010 | 3:20 am

  So last night I made my way to Pakhuis Wilhelmina, a funky former warehouse turned live music venue in Amsterdam to see what turned out to be a surprisingly excellent Dutch Ramones tribute band. (Click the photo to enlarge.) While the band was terrific, they only knew about ten songs and considering most Ramones tunes clock in at less than three minutes we heard each song twice. The crowd didn't care, getting more into it on the second go-round. (I think I heard Blitzkrieg Bop three times, but I can't be sure). So I look up to the chalkboard menu to see the brands of beer they…

• DSBtheMovie: Crowdsourced film created quickly and with zero budget

  David Meerman Scott

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:03 am

  While in Amsterdam where I keynoted the Marketing Pioneers event, I met Jan Willem Alphenaar, Producer and Director of DSB the Movie. The film tells the story of the Netherland's DSB Bank NV which was declared bankrupt by court in October, 2009. Amazingly, Jan crowdsourced everything for the film including the film's logo, producer, scriptwriters, soundtrack, editor, camera, actors, and publicity. The film will be completed in just four months and with zero budget. Here is my interview with Jan which includes the film's trailer at 0:55. Direct link to my video here. Direct link to the film…

• Corporate comedy

  David Meerman Scott

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:14 am

  Corporate comedy is one of those phrases like "jumbo shrimp," "smart ass," and "party down in Omaha" that seems a bit off. (No offense to shrimps, asses, or those from Omaha). Despite its rarity, comedy can be an extremely powerful corporate marketing tool. My friend Tim Washer, who is head of social media productions for IBM worldwide, is a comic genius. He pushes his colleagues at IBM on the value of hysterical videos and is in charge of producing them. I sat down with Tim to talk comedy. Specifically I wanted to find out how a marketer goes about convincing…

• 
  davefleet.com

• Customer Service In The Age Of Social Media

  Dave Fleet

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:08 am

  Yesterday I spoke with City News‘ Kris Reyes about the challenges businesses face in customer service in the age of social media. In Toronto we’ve seen numerous recent instances of “citizen journalism” highlighting problems at the TTC – a TwitPic of a TTC worker sleeping; a video of a bus driver’s unscheduled coffee break in the middle of a route and finally a perhaps ill-advised Facebook page set up by some TTC staff. It’s a tough time to work in a customer-facing job. It just takes one slip-up and, if you’re unlucky, you can find yourself all…

• Launching The Social Mediators Video Podcast

  Dave Fleet

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:20 am

  Today we’re launching the Social Mediators video podcast. Each week, Joe Thornley, Terry Fallis and I (three guys who, as Joe says, should never be on camera!) will chat about social media and its intersection with communications, organizations and society in general. As Joe put it on his site: “We’re always on, always connected. How are we taking advantage of the new capablities that gives us? And how is that affecting the way we relate to one another and how we organize around common interests? Finally, what does that mean for traditional organizations – companies,…

• Use Social Media To Make Them Feel Special

  Dave Fleet

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:53 am

  80+ tweets, dozens and dozens of Facebook wall posts and numerous private messages. That’s all it took (along with some kind and hilarious antics from my co-workers) to make me feel truly special on my birthday yesterday. Are you doing this kind of thing for your customers? Are you taking a few seconds (or minutes) to make them feel special? It really isn’t difficult – it just took a few seconds to post those messages, but the effect was disproportionate to the effort required. If you’re connected to customers in such a way (online or offline) that you know their…

• More Journalists Prefer Bulk Email Than Personalized? Huh?

  Dave Fleet

  3 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

  Last week saw the launch of a campaign entitled “An Inconvenient PR Truth,” aimed at trying to weed-out some of the black sheep in the PR family. Many of us in the profession have been arguing for similar practices to those advocated there for a while. While the campaign’s approach raised my hackles somewhat, the motives stated seem reasonable on the face of things. This post isn’t about the broader campaign though. Buried deep in a slide deck supporting the campaign was a slide about the way journalists prefer to receive “press release emails” (a term that…

• Charlie Brooker Shows Us How To Report The News

  Dave Fleet

  1 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

  A little light viewing for you. You may have already seen this – if so, watch it again. Otherwise, take two minutes to watch it. It’s worth it.

• 
  Better Closer

• Social Media Monitoring, Tracking Investor Sentiment on Twitter

  Bill Rice

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

  Investor sentiment is a big deal to publicly traded companies. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to know what your investors are thinking by simply watching the ticker. Social media and social networking can be a great way to monitor this very important measure of investor relations. Financial Blogs Blogs are now the old guys on the block. Easy to set-up and simple to publish to, these platforms are potentially as powerful as any other financial publisher. Their combination of experts and reach make them a great source of information on how the market perceives your company. Blogs tend…

• Book Review: Selling Change

  Bill Rice

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:38 am

  I’ve always thought that books on sales topics need to be different. The best sales people that I know are consistently high-energy and high-strung—not a great combination for reading your average 250 page book. Brett Clay the author of Selling Change (affiliate link) is a sales guy, so he gets this. The physical structure of the book was my first delight with this book. It’s a durable hard-back, with sturdy pages to notate, no dust cover to fuss with, and a convenient ribbon bookmark. This book is meant to be a long-term phone-side companion. Then as I cracked the binding I was again…

• Using Twitter as a Powerful PR Toolkit

  Bill Rice

  3 Feb 2010 | 5:45 am

  Twitter is a public relations professional’s dream or nightmare. It’s one of the simplest, but at the same time the most complicated of recent communication tools. This dichotomy has fueled much of the fear in the PR community. That’s why I thought I would give you a few simple tips to make Twitter a PR tool, not an adversary. I will give you a few simple steps to remove the nightmare and emphasize the dream. Start Monitoring The first logical step in any social media strategy is to start with listening. Just like at a cocktail party, you should respectfully listen in on the…

• Book Review: Linchpin by Seth Godin

  Bill Rice

  26 Jan 2010 | 7:09 am

  I’ve met Seth Godin only once in person. I attended one of his personal jam sessions (my term, not his) in New York. He changes you. Not everyone gets that opportunity. However, I think Linchpin comes the closest to having your own personal jam session with Seth Godin, the master marketer. My first reaction to Linchpin was: this is Seth Godin, the acoustic version—raw and deeply passionate. Written in his signature manifesto style, Linchpin is an anthem to the change we are all feeling. The world, companies, economics, technology, employment, and people all seem to be in caught in a…

• Clever Ways to Monitor Social Media with FriendFeed

  Bill Rice

  26 Jan 2010 | 6:00 am

  FriendFeed is a powerful aggregator of social media. What really makes it interesting is that it is an aggregator of others aggregations. That means you potentially get the best of everyone else’s social media monitoring. What does that mean? Simply put the best of social media monitoring–aggregation and pretty good noise filtration. Here are some of my favorite ways to use FriendFeed to monitor social media: 1. Start with some keyword searches - This is the first step to discovering all of the valuable information being exchanged within the social media ecosystem. A few simple…

• 
  The Harte of Marketing

• Getting Management Buy-In For Integrated Marketing & Communications

  Anna Barcelos and Beth Harte

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

  There are a lot of marketers out there that understand that integrated marketing and communications (IMC) is a preferred way to do business because it is an outside-in approach. If an organization isn’t integrated, what are the best approaches to getting management buy-in? Anna Barcelos and I wanted to share nine key ways to provide management with the value of IMC. Sales-Oriented Vs. Market-Oriented – Which Are You? It’s often been said that the mindset of “If we build it, they will come” is not viable for long term business. To understand why, let’s look at the difference…

• Integrated Marketing & Communications, Redux

  Beth Harte

  19 Jan 2010 | 5:50 am

  The hiatus is over! For those who have been loyal readers of this blog, Happy New Year! And I thank you for hanging in there with me while I took the time to consider where to head next.    For a long time I focused on marketing, PR and social media, but rarely the integration of them all. The focus of The Harte of Marketing for 2010 (and perhaps beyond) will be integrated marketing & communications. While integrated marketing communications (IMC) is nothing new, the embracing of social media surely puts IMC back in the spotlight as its principles are similar to long-standing IMC…

• An Unscientific Test of Authenticity & Transparency: How Much Do They Really Matter?

  Beth Harte

  30 Sep 2009 | 8:04 pm

  Although my blog is technically on “hiatus,” I felt this post was too important to not post it here (versus my digital marketing notebook on Posterous). I am still thinking about the direction my blog will be heading, but I know one thing for sure…it will include a lot more analysis, testing, and less opinion.  As a marketer, testing is at the heart of what we do (or should do) and I for one have been lax when it comes to testing social media. Without testing all aspects of social media, we are, unfortunately, arguing from ignorance.  The first test: Authenticity,…

• Putting myself on a time out.

  Beth Harte

  28 Aug 2009 | 11:19 am

  I wrote a really verbose post, but a good friend told me that what I had written didn’t sound like me (you know who you are…thank you again!). So, here’s take two.  This past year has been truly exceptional and while I love blogging, I am not a writer. So from that regard, I struggle. I know this is *my* blog and I can do with it what I’d like, but I also don’t want to produce crap content. I have SO many thoughts rattling around in my head but the pressure to make them perfect stops me from writing them down. And the time to make them perfect doesn’t…

• Gardening…The Social Media Way

  Beth Harte

  12 Aug 2009 | 6:34 am

  Teresa Basich and I teamed up to write this post after discussing David Armano’s post. Teresa kicked off a group conversation by asking the insightful question “Now, what could we add to David’s blueprint beginnings?”  Teresa wrote 3/4 of this post, so if you like the way her uber-smart brain works, be sure to check out her blog,  Overcommunicated, too. Back in June David Armano of Dachis Corporation had an interesting post on debunking social media myths featured on the Conversation Starters blog of the Harvard Business Review. David discussed how organizations…

• 
  Holy Kaw!

• Google Buzz's official demo [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:25 am

  Google has just unveiled its latest attempt to become more relevant in the social media space—Google Buzz. The product is integrated within Gmail and will be rolled out gradually to all of the webmail service’s users over the next few days. While this development is still unfolding, you can check out Google Buzz’s two-minute demo of Buzz in action both online and via mobile. What are your initial reactions? Another soon-to-be-forgotten Google product like Wave, or a Facebook/Twitter killer? Full story at Mashable. Total Google coverage. Permalink | Leave a…

• Darth Vader’s original wimpy voice [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:15 am

  Imagine a galaxy far, far away where Darth Vader sounded like any other British bloke strolling down the corridors of the Death Star. Before James Earl Jones provided the menacing voice of the Dark Lord of the Sith, English actor and bodybuilder David Prowse delivered the lines from inside the Darth costume. While George Lucas never intended for Prowse’s voice to make the flick’s final cut, it’s weird to imagine how different Star Wars would have been with a different Vader voice. Full story at Huffington Post. Tons of Star Wars tidbits. Permalink | Leave a…

• 7 things you didn’t know about condoms

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:14 am

  Rubbers. Raincoats. Inconvenient. Whatever you call 'em, condoms remain a must-have in the safe sex tool box. Long before the days of Durex and Trojans, men used animal intestines to protect their willies (that sounds lovely, eh ladies?) and still to this day use lambskin condoms for latex allergies and supposed extra sensitivity. Want to learn even more fun facts about condoms that will surely impress your friends and potential lovers? Check out Asylum's seven things you probably didn't know about condoms that includes tantalizing tidbits like: Vaseline + condoms = Disintegrated rubber and…

• Horror flick mirror scare mash-up [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 am

  Horror movies love to rely on cliches to scare the bejeezus out of us, but does it really surprise anyone that the axe murderer is going to pop in the reflection of a mirror? Ok, yes, it still totally sparks a few pee-in-pants moments. Check out this mash-up of mirror scare moments (fair warning: don’t watch alone in a big, dark, scary house): Full story at Four Four. Boo! Tons of scary and not so scary movie news. Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• 7 things you shouldn't do on Valentine's Day

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:13 am

  Ah, Valentine’s day. February fourteenth marks that special moment in the year when Hallmark cashes in on our emotions and cupid gets busy shooting arrows. Whether you’re indifferent, excited, upset, or madly in love—there are seven things you just shouldn’t do on this lovey-dovey holiday. See a few do-not-do’s below: Go on a first date. First dates are hard enough, why add the extra pressure? Call your ex. Abort mission! On a day like this, it’s normal for your thoughts to drift to the one you used to be with, but you broke up for a reason. So, spare…