Can you tell your story - or the story of your business? Tell it so it moves someone - moves them to action? Tell your story so it treads well-worn neural pathways achingly familiar to the human mind and spirit? Time-tested pathways ... open, and indeed looking for, great stories? Stories populated with saints, sinners, sorry sad sacks, winners - all, at the core - fighting for their space and place in time?
Selected by stevekayser
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Most Topular Stories
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Saints, Sad Sacks, and Business Storytellers
Steve Kayser's Riffs, Tiffs and What Ifs3 Feb 2012 | 7:36 pm -
How coffee changed America [infographic]
Holy Kaw!9 Feb 2012 | 8:57 amFull-size version at Lumin Consulting. Delicious coffee. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
A Look at Steve Jobs' FBI File
ReadWriteWeb9 Feb 2012 | 8:16 amYes, it's true. The FBI had a file on Steve Jobs. It's not what you might think, though. The FBI performed a "level III" background investigation on Jobs as a potential presidential appointee in 1991. He was described by most witnesses as an "individual of good character and integrity" that would be suitable for a "position of trust and confidence with the Government." Jobs also had a brush with the FBI when Apple received a bomb threat in 1985. Sponsor According to one of the filings, Jobs was being considered for an appointment to the President's Export Council in early 1991. This was while… -
DARPA AlphaDog Robot Steps Lively With 400 Lbs on its Back [VIDEO]
Mashable!9 Feb 2012 | 8:14 amThe typical soldier can only carry about 100 lbs. worth of gear, but not indefinitely. DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) new robotic mule, however, can carry 400 lbs. of gear and never get tired — and it can do it with a surprising degree of agility. Physical overburden of soldiers is one of the top five biggest challenges for the U.S. army, according to DARPA, and a semi-autonomous legged robot, officially named the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), might be one way of fixing that problem. In the video above, the LS3 prototype (original developer Boston… -
Google+ Has a Perception Problem
Web Strategy by Jeremiah9 Feb 2012 | 5:36 amRemember that smart kid who sat in the front of the class, but was ignored by the cool kids? That’s a good metaphor for what Google+ is going through. I’ve heard from corporate social strategists I should be cautious about how much time and how frequently I discuss this nascent social newtork, and I spoke to media from a Tier 1 this week who said “does anyone even go there anymore? It seems like a wasteland”. Furthermore take this damning image which has been viewed 11k times suggests Google+ is filled with Google employees –and that’s about it. In fact, in our data on Super bowl…
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Steve Kayser's Riffs, Tiffs and What Ifs
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Saints, Sad Sacks, and Business Storytellers
3 Feb 2012 | 7:36 pmCan you tell your story - or the story of your business? Tell it so it moves someone - moves them to action? Tell your story so it treads well-worn neural pathways achingly familiar to the human mind and spirit? Time-tested pathways ... open, and indeed looking for, great stories? Stories populated with saints, sinners, sorry sad sacks, winners - all, at the core - fighting for their space and place in time? -
Are You Still Relevant?
27 Jan 2012 | 12:41 pm“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” - Alvin Toffler I heard a couple of acquaintances talk about a person they work with that was "older" and no longer contributing to their business. This person apparently couldn't, or wouldn't, learn new skills. Or, for that matter, even keep up with the skill-set needed for the job. Age was mentioned, and not favorably. They thought this person should be "put out to pasture." -
Building Yourself a Better Brain
23 Jan 2012 | 10:09 pmAn interview with Dr. Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling Buddha’ Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom. It has been translated to 21 languages and spent over 300 days on Amazon’s list of top 100 best-selling non-fiction books. Dr. Rick has a new book out called Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. He has taught at Oxford, Stanford and Harvard and his work has been featured in BBC, NPR,, US News and World Report.. -
Best of STORY and Storyteller Interviews 2011
4 Jan 2012 | 10:35 amRobin Hood, Batman, Hoop Dreams, Zanskar, Bagger Vance - they're all here. Learn from best-selling authors, screenwriters, storytellers and movie-makers Steven Pressfield, Pen Densham, Michael Uslan, Frederick Marx and Robert McKee. -
Good Intentions Gone Bad!
1 Jan 2012 | 3:42 pmFeaturing an interview with Lynne McTaggart, author of "The Intention Experiment." I fully intended to keep my 2012 New Year's resolutions. I knew it would be hard. But I had good intentions. I had good intentions. Really. I lasted ...
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Holy Kaw!
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How coffee changed America [infographic]
9 Feb 2012 | 8:57 amFull-size version at Lumin Consulting. Delicious coffee. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Restaurant brands flock to Kids LiveWell program
9 Feb 2012 | 8:54 amThe number of restaurant brands participating in the Kids LiveWell program has tripled to 70 companies and 20,000 restaurants across the country. Eateries are finding creative ways to participate in the program that helps parents find healthier dining choices for their children, says Healthy Dining President Anita Jones-Mueller. Full story at SmartBlog on Restaurants by SmartBrief. More SmartBrief stories. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
DIY Pop Tarts on a stick
9 Feb 2012 | 8:10 amA hungry wise man once said, “All tasty food should come on a stick.” The food gods have responded to the man’s stick wish and created mini Pop Tarts on...you guessed it...a stick. Quicker alternative: toothpick, full-size Pop Tart, knife. Full recipe and directions at caplan miller. Delicious DIY. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Fast-food diners say "downsize me"
9 Feb 2012 | 8:08 amAsking consumers if they would like a smaller portion may be a better approach to curbing overeating than posting calorie counts. The study from Tulane University found that when servers asked customers whether they’d like to “downsize” starchy side dishes at a Chinese fast-food restaurant as many as a third gladly cut back—saving an average 200 calories each meal. “Our goal was to test whether the invitation to downsize a meal component would be embraced by consumers and, importantly, whether the approach would be more effective than a purely information-based… -
The video game entertainment curve
9 Feb 2012 | 8:05 amVia loldwell. Video gaming. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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ReadWriteWeb
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A Look at Steve Jobs' FBI File
9 Feb 2012 | 8:16 amYes, it's true. The FBI had a file on Steve Jobs. It's not what you might think, though. The FBI performed a "level III" background investigation on Jobs as a potential presidential appointee in 1991. He was described by most witnesses as an "individual of good character and integrity" that would be suitable for a "position of trust and confidence with the Government." Jobs also had a brush with the FBI when Apple received a bomb threat in 1985. Sponsor According to one of the filings, Jobs was being considered for an appointment to the President's Export Council in early 1991. This was while… -
Oracle Claims Taleo's Cloud-based Talent Management Jackpot
9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amIn the 20th century, corporations recruited talented professionals but then nurtured them and integrated them into their organizations. Talent was part of their business foundations. In the more intricate economy of the 21st, talent is something perceived to be possessed by individuals. Corporations recruit these people, and then undertake what's called compensation management in an effort to retain them as long as possible, and to let go of talent that doesn't perform up to scale. The value of a single, global database for evaluating the dollar value of individual talent on a real-time scale… -
Big Question (Answered): "Do You Have Too Many Facebook Friends?"
9 Feb 2012 | 7:04 amEvery day I jump onto Facebook for my work, but honestly, I never use it as it was intended. If you send me a message or like my status, I might engage, but I never reach out to folks. My stream is full of interesting content about people I don't know enough to care about. I know that sounds rude, but there's really only so much room in your life for connections. I have a little over 700 friends and I think that's about 500 too many. I've been considering paring down for some time, not because I think my connections aren't cool, but because I'm missing out on things like my family's birthday… -
Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Implement Mobile Cloud Services in Titanium
9 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amMobile development company Appcelerator announced today that it is buying "backend-as-a-service" startup Cocoafish to implement cloud services and functionality to its Titanium Platform. Acquiring Cocoafish is an astute move by Appcelerator, which focuses on tools for developers to create native and mobile Web apps. The company realized in its latest mobile developer report that 84% of developers using Titanium were utilizing some type of cloud service. With Cocoafish, Appcelerator attempts to keep all the necessary mobile development tools on its own platform. Appcelerator admits that with… -
Three Ways To Use Linked In If You're NOT Looking For A Job
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amA post last week on pimping your LinkedIn profile drew a big response, as well as a divide in comments about whether or not people should be using LinkedIn. One of the bigger misconceptions in comments in emails was that LinkedIn is primarily a job-hunting site. But there are reasons to use LinkedIn even if you have a job you love, aside from the obvious benefits of keeping up on your industry and making connections with potential business partners. Sponsor Among them: LinkedIn is a great contact manager. Not all of your contacts will have their phone numbers in their LinkedIn profile (and if…
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Mashable!
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DARPA AlphaDog Robot Steps Lively With 400 Lbs on its Back [VIDEO]
9 Feb 2012 | 8:14 amThe typical soldier can only carry about 100 lbs. worth of gear, but not indefinitely. DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) new robotic mule, however, can carry 400 lbs. of gear and never get tired — and it can do it with a surprising degree of agility. Physical overburden of soldiers is one of the top five biggest challenges for the U.S. army, according to DARPA, and a semi-autonomous legged robot, officially named the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), might be one way of fixing that problem. In the video above, the LS3 prototype (original developer Boston… -
FBI Investigated Steve Jobs When First Bush Administration Wanted to Hire Him
9 Feb 2012 | 7:58 amThe Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a 191-page background check on late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs that was done in 1991, when Jobs was considered for a post in the George H.W. Bush administration. The report doesn’t delineate what kind of post Jobs was being considered for. The report, which the FBI posted on its website, includes feedback based on interviews with friends and colleagues of Jobs that should be familiar to readers of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs bio, including: “Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs’s honesty, stating that Mr. Jobs will… -
Apple to Unveil iPad 3 in March and It Could Look Like This [RUMOR]
9 Feb 2012 | 7:52 amThe tech world awoke today to a new batch of rumors about the iPad 3. First various sites reported on an alleged leak of some of the components of the tablet, then another chimed in to announce that Apple is planning a March unveiling for its new tablet. Yesterday Repair Labs posted a picture of what it says is the back housing for the iPad 3, supposedly from “industry insiders” in China. Comparing the component to the iPad 2, it reveals some differences, specifically that there will be more room for a larger battery, a different camera and a new LCD screen. The sources also said… -
Texts Now Popular Ammo for Divorce Battles [VIDEO]
9 Feb 2012 | 7:39 amNew technological and social media tools have a way of messing up relationships — and they can also be used for evidence when those relationships fail and end up in divorce court. A study of divorce attorneys released this week shows an increase in smartphones being used as evidence. Ninety-two percent of the attorneys surveyed in the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers study said they’ve seen an increase in the past few years in the number of cases that use evidence from smartphones; 94% said they’ve seen a rise in the use of texts as evidence in the past three years. -
Photo Finish: Kodak to Stop Selling Digital Cameras
9 Feb 2012 | 7:28 amIn a cost-cutting move and a signal of the company’s poor financial situation, Eastman Kodak on Thursday announced it plans to stop selling digital cameras. The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, will instead focus on online and retail-based photo printing as well as desktop inkjet printing. Kodak plans to phase out all digital camera sales within the first half of this year. The move is expected to save Kodak $100 million. Kodak expects to incur charges of $30 million for exiting the business. “For some time, Kodak’s strategy has been to improve margins in…
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Web Strategy by Jeremiah
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Google+ Has a Perception Problem
9 Feb 2012 | 5:36 amRemember that smart kid who sat in the front of the class, but was ignored by the cool kids? That’s a good metaphor for what Google+ is going through. I’ve heard from corporate social strategists I should be cautious about how much time and how frequently I discuss this nascent social newtork, and I spoke to media from a Tier 1 this week who said “does anyone even go there anymore? It seems like a wasteland”. Furthermore take this damning image which has been viewed 11k times suggests Google+ is filled with Google employees –and that’s about it. In fact, in our data on Super bowl… -
Altimeter Webinar Recording: State of Social Media Management Industry
8 Feb 2012 | 10:08 amThis week, Altimeter (myself and Andrew Jones, researcher) hosted a webinar stemming from the the recent report on Social Media Proliferation, which you can download the full report on this blog post. In the embedded slides and video below, you’ll be able to get additional insights on how we perceive how this market will change in the coming years: We’ll see a vendor shakeout, although expect pure play vendors of each of the five uses cases to remain Consolidation will occur from market forces of email marketing, web analytics, CMS, marketing automation, brand monitoring, support… -
Hey Retailers! Refine That Mobile Marketing Strategy (Altimeter Report)
7 Feb 2012 | 10:01 amThis latest Altimeter Report, by my colleague Industry Analyst Chris Silva, focuses on how companies must develop a mobile marketing strategy. It sources research from 26 ecosystem contributors including brands, agencies, and technology providers. To learn more about this report, please register for the webinar in which Chris will provide deeper knowledge from the report. This report is powerful in a few ways, it indicates the growth the in space, referencing that 45% of all mobile phone users are carrying a smart phone, and the growth rate for tablets is 23% annually. The report also… -
Five Trends: How Brands Integrated Social, Mobile, and Web into 2012 Super Bowl Advertisements
6 Feb 2012 | 8:39 amBy Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, and Zak Kirchner Findings: Five Trends Indicate Cross Channel Integration a Mainstay. Super Bowl ads, while only representing the nation’s largest consumer facing ads are a bellwether for advertising trends for the remainder of the year. To best understand these trends, Altimeter Group’s research team analyzed each Ad in real time, and conducted analysis to best understand the advertising trends for 2012. Using Chicago as a middle ground, we reviewed all ads from kickoff till the game clock expired and found that trends out of 87… -
P&G Layoffs Signal Focus on Digital Industry
4 Feb 2012 | 10:49 amLast week was a tremendous change, giant marketer P&G announces 1600 layoffs as they reduce jobs in various roles, and instead shifting budget to digital marketing. The CEO, when pressed, indicates a strong focus on digital marketing, citing: “In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that return on investment of the advertising when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient” -Bob McDonald, Chairman-CEO, P&G Yet this is a trend, as P&G had previously cut advertising spend on soap operas on traditional TV,…
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Web Ink Now
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MYTH: "My buyers are not on the Web"
5 Feb 2012 | 8:20 amI frequently hear from people that their buyers are not on the Web. This myth is used an excuse not to create a valuable Web site and to avoid creating content. Sorry to deliver a reality check, but the truth is that very few people are offline, particularly when you include lower cost mobile technology. In fact, there are more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes. Of the 6 billion people on the planet, 4.8 billion have access to a mobile phone. I saw this phenomenon in action this week while on a one-week expedition in the Panamanian jungle. Together with seven other international… -
The advertising arms race now going to the edge of space
31 Jan 2012 | 3:17 amPerhaps you've seen the video Lego Man in Space that’s gone around recently. It's an interesting time-lapse sequence of a ride on a weather balloon and has generated two million views in five days. Whenever there is a new technology like this, it is inevitable that somebody will use it as a place to sell ads. Enter JP Aerospace, a company that flies a high altitude balloon, carrying ads, to the edge of space and returns photos for the sponsor to use. The JP Aerospace site says: "Creates impact! Gives customers a lasting impression of your logo or message! Provides a dramatic image for your… -
Thinking Right (and Left) about Content Marketing
27 Jan 2012 | 1:11 pmAs I evaluate Web marketing such as blogs and websites, one thing I look for is evidence of both left-brain and right-brain thinking in the creation of the content. This obsession might seem trivial, but I guess my right-brain outlook on life causes me to take a holistic view of content. The right-/left-brain concept is widely credited to have developed from the thinking of American psychobiologist Roger Sperry in the late 1960s. Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning work opened whole fields of psychological and philosophical debate including the idea that there are two different sides of the brain,… -
Playing for Change
23 Jan 2012 | 7:28 amWhen I first saw the original Playing for Change video Stand By Me on YouTube I was moved and fascinated and jumped for joy. Wow. As a music lover and collector of social media success stories, here was both music and social media triumphantly on display and coming together to support a good cause. I talked up the videos via social and in person to everyone I saw. Stand By Me now has 37 million views on YouTube and has sparked a movement. Now, Playing for Change has 15 videos in the Songs Around the World series with a combined 140 million views. If you haven't seen a Playing for Change video… -
Stop SOPA Silliness
18 Jan 2012 | 3:36 amIt didn't work with music: The music industry killed Napster and sued 16-year-olds to protect their dying business model of selling "albums" via top 40 radio. Instead of understanding the immense power of social media like YouTube as a marketing tool to sell single songs (iTunes) and streaming subscriptions (Spotify), the music industry honchos preferred to destroy in a ridiculous attempt to save the status-quo. Listened to top 40 radio recently? It didn't work with email: I get many times more unsolicited (and illegal) email than I did prior to CAN-SPAM. Tons of it from legitimate companies…
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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
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Be a Good Newbie!
9 Feb 2012 | 5:40 amA Guest Post by Rosemary O’Neill Last week, I wrote about how to be an upstanding citizen of the Twitter and LinkedIn worlds. But what if you’re venturing farther into untested waters? What if you’re pointing your canoe toward some of the newer and less-traveled areas of the web? When a new social tool arrives on your map, it is even more important to mind your manners, especially if there are natives who have been there for a while already. Pinterest, Google+, Quora, Tumblr, EmpireAvenue and others were populated with early adopters and beta testers long before the rest of the… -
Can You Find Success Following a Firing?
8 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amOne of the most challenging situations a person can find themselves in is trying to secure a new job after they’ve been terminated from a previous position. While there is hope of locating employment following a termination, the odds are definitely lessened for such individuals, who must fight through the stigma of being removed from a company. The bottom line is resiliency and the ability to best explain away why you were let go. For those individuals who have to deal with such a situation, keep several things in mind: Deal with reality – It is never easy when the pink slip arrives and… -
Five Delegation Thinking Traps that Trip Almost Everyone Who Wants to Scale Up
7 Feb 2012 | 5:39 amScaling Up Requires Pushing Down Lower-Level Tasks In the companies I worked with and for, product development schedules were cyclical, with seriously tight deadlines at certain times of the year and a more relaxing pace when those deadline had been achieved. To even out this ebb and flow of deliverables, we would hire freelancers, off-sire staff, and development groups. Even the most entry-level full-time people were managing and influencing the performance of someone else. The ability to influence another person’s performance in positive ways affected how quickly employees could grow… -
Does Your Business Style Connect or Make People Cringe?
6 Feb 2012 | 5:43 amGet Serious Attention In Amanda Valenti’s recent guest post here about Common Writing Mistakes, she made many important points that I encourage small businesses to take to heart. If spelling, grammar, and homophones are not your strong suites, find someone who can edit what you write. It IS worth it because Amanda is absolutely correct – these types of errors will cost you visitors and business. There is something more serious you must be aware of as well and that is what kind of image you are presenting to the world. Specifically, what you consider acceptable regarding profanity,… -
Beach Notes: After the Storm
5 Feb 2012 | 7:11 amby Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh After the storm, creative thinking … With all the driftwood on the beach after recent big storms, some people see debris spoiling the usually pristine sands. Others see a gift for creativity. What do you see when everything goes pear-shaped and plans fall apart? Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh
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louisgray.com
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Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting
7 Feb 2012 | 10:53 amLast fall, shortly after I joined Google, Michelle Greenlee contacted me for a quick interview about the Google hiring experience, and what tech-savvy job seekers can do to leverage the influence of social media to influence hiring managers. The story was finally posted this morning.The biggest take-away is probably my last note in an answer to her final question: "The world is becoming social and the new world of business and hiring can find great candidates through how you present yourself online."See: Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting/via My Google+ Profile.More:… -
50 Things a +1 Can Mean
7 Feb 2012 | 12:15 amA +1 is simple. It’s one of the easiest ways on the web to take an action that endorses the content and says you saw something. But it can mean many different things. That’s the beauty of +1. You can +1 things you like. You can +1 bad news. You can +1 things you love. You can +1 casual status updates or items that change the world.Often, we get asked what it means to +1. Here are some ideas. We’d love to see yours./via The Google+ Page (Which I maintain)1. A +1 can say you agree with the post.2. A +1 can say your photo is beautiful.3. A +1 can say your joke was funny.4. A +1 can mean… -
Two Numbers: 1 and 90 Million
7 Feb 2012 | 12:10 amBy now, you all have seen the dual bits of news today - first that Google+ has achieved 90 million users with at least one new feature every single day, over 1 million businesses and brand pages, and sign in of 60% daily, 80% weekly.Also, earlier today, Google was (for the 3rd time) named the best place to work by Fortune Magazine (see http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html). We're working on making Google+ the best place to be for you so you can be just as proud about these numbers and this news. To stay on top of all this great stuff,… -
Daria Musk Visits Google+ for Live Performance
7 Feb 2012 | 12:08 amLast Monday, I had the great pleasure of meeting Daria Musk and interviewing her on stage, to learn more about her story and rise from relative obscurity to becoming a Google+ sensation. As I told the Google+ team, assembled in the private concert, in my introduction, Daria epitomizes the community here as well as anyone I know.She is fully invested in this platform, is tireless, upbeat, and to boot, is incredibly talented. I'd heard her sing in many a hangout, but to hear her sing live at Google was transformative. Nothing beats a live performance by an artist with passion, energy… -
10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+
7 Feb 2012 | 12:04 amAs social networks evolve, so to do your circles. Even in the few months since our launch, you’ve probably added a lot of people to your circles who you didn’t know before - people who share common interests, or came by recommendation of a trusted friend or expert. Some people have rocketed their way to high visibility, added to hundreds of thousands of circles, by virtue of their actions on Google+. So while I can’t promise you the big numbers, here are ten ways you can get found on Google+, and examples to boot.1. Embrace the Community While Doing Something Unique and Creative.Daria…
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Seth's Blog
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Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)
9 Feb 2012 | 2:46 amIf I tell you, "I'm going to the baseball game," it seems as though you're likely to understand what I mean. Of course, you won't. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it's a religious experience. Me, I don't even like baseball. Or maybe it's my nephew's ball game (the playoffs), or maybe going to the game causes me to miss an important event, and on and on. We label the experience with just two words, and two words can't possibly capture the emotions and circumstance surrounding an event. The same thing is true with brands. If I tell you that a new business was funded by USV, that might… -
How do they know you're not a flake?
8 Feb 2012 | 2:43 amBefore your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures. Do I know this person? Did someone I trust send them over? Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?) Has she won an award? Is she famous? Are there typos and is the design sloppy? Are they pestering me? Do I already follow this person online? Does music play when I visit the website? Will… -
Horizontal marketing isn't a new idea
7 Feb 2012 | 2:09 amBut it is the new reality for just about every organization. Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money. Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It's out of your control, because all the interactions are… -
Who is your customer?
6 Feb 2012 | 2:26 amRule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service. Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently. The question: Who is your customer? It's not obvious. Zappos is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes. Nike, on the other hand, doesn't care very much at all about the people who buy the shoes, or even the retailers. They care about the athletes (often famous) that wear the shoes, sometimes for money. They name buildings after these athletes, court them, erect… -
In search of a timid trapeze artist
5 Feb 2012 | 2:01 amGood luck with that, there aren't any. If you hesitate when leaping from rope to another, you're not going to last very long. And this is at the heart of what makes innovation work in organizations, why industries die, and how painful it is to try to maintain the status quo while also participating in a revolution. Gather up as much speed as you can, find a path and let go. You can't get to the next rope if you're still holding on to this one.
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Scobleizer
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Hacker News vs. Google+
5 Feb 2012 | 10:20 amI might as well have titled this “Hacker News vs Marketers.” Or “Hacker News vs Bloggers.” Or “jerks vs nice people.” But I never participate in Hacker News for a few reasons and I just was faced with these reasons again when I read the responses there to my blog post yesterday. 1. Programmers often have an attitude of “I can code, you can’t, so I am defacto better than you.” This often comes out in Hacker News comments. 2. Programmers love to bash people anonymously and then, in real life, they will come begging for PR for their companies… -
It’s too late for Dave Winer and John Battelle to save the common web
4 Feb 2012 | 5:02 pmThe date was January 3, 2008. Facebook had kicked me off for running a script to try to save the common web. See, I worked with Plaxo to run a simple script. One that would have taken my contacts out of Facebook and put them back into the common web. The script did some very simple things: 1. It grabbed all my friends names. 2. It grabbed all their phone numbers. 3. It grabbed all their email addresses. 4. It gave me a simple CSV file with all that data so I could bring them back to Google, or Microsoft, or anywhere else I wanted to put them. Facebook’s answer was predictable. They shut… -
HTML 5 pushback in San Francisco? Best mobile app designers say yes
1 Feb 2012 | 3:39 pmThe new Path? The one that won a Crunchie last night for great design? It’s not done in HTML 5. This morning I saw something new coming soon from Storify. Not done in HTML 5. This morning I visited Foodspotting, which just shipped hot new apps on iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Not done in HTML 5. More and more I’m hearing that designers and developers are ignoring HTML 5, especially for the high end of apps. Why? Well, Path’s founders told me it just isn’t possible to build a great user interface, the way they did it in HTML 5. Storify’s founder told me it… -
Why Facebook will be worth a half trillion by 2015: the mobile and open graph revenue it’s leaving on the table
1 Feb 2012 | 2:48 pmLots of people think Facebook is overvalued, at about $100 billion (it just released their S1, announcing its IPO). But in talking with developers, like I did with Foodspotting’s founder, Alexa Andrzejewski, and in reading the S1 I see that Facebook has left most of the potential revenue on the table. That makes me think that the folks crying “overvalued” are nuts. Check that interview out, Foodspotting is one of the hottest San Francisco startups, aimed at people who are looking for better places to eat. Here it is from just this morning: See, Mark Zuckerberg is sandbagging… -
2012 brings a pause in the disruption
31 Jan 2012 | 4:58 pmOK, I’ve been talking with hundreds of geeks from around the world this year at three conferences, CES, DLD, and World Economic Forum. I’m seeing a trend that is worth talking about. What is it? We’re seeing the end of one of the most disruptive ages in human history. I believe that we’re seeing a pause in the disruption. More on that a little later. Just think about all the changes humans have been asked to adopt in the past eight years. Most of us, back then, didn’t carry mobile computers in our pockets. If we did use tablets, like I did, they were expensive,…
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News from SMP
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Technology and antivirus company AVG prices IPO
1 Feb 2012 | 4:00 pmTechnology and antivirus company AVG prices IPOWith the world focused on Facebook’s IPO, technology company AVG Technologies N.V., more widely known as an antivirus software maker couldn’t of picked a more volatile time to press release details of... -
Can The X Factor muster another number one?
8 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pmCan The X Factor muster another number one?UK X Factor 2011 winners Little Mix (covering Damian Rice’s Cannonball) were beaten to the Christmas number one by the Military Wives Choir (Wherever You Are composed by Paul Melor). The girl band (... -
Integrated Social Media Marketing Event touches down in Asia February 2012
4 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pmIntegrated Social Media Marketing Event touches down in Asia February 2012Integrated approach leverages social media for enhanced engagement and brandingPacific Conferences’ Integrated Social Media Marketing Conference offers actionable insights i... -
Weight Watchers kicks off 2012 TV ad and social media campaign
2 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pmWeight Watchers kicks off 2012 TV ad and social media campaignWeight Watchers UK kicks off its first TV and social media campaign of 2012, and the timing couldn't have been better as we see in the New Year. Marketing magazine reported ... -
Social media analysis for the UK X Factor finale
23 Dec 2011 | 4:00 pmSocial media analysis for the UK X Factor finaleThe X Factor social media infographic week 10 from the live shows finale 2011 for series 8Elemental's UK X Factor social media analysis and infographic for the Week 10 finale. The grap...
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Copyblogger
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How to Recover From a Social Media Hangover
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am“Hello. My name is Cori and I’m a social media addict. “Today is day 1 of my commitment to give myself a regular break from technology and the foggy, uncreative haze it can unwittingly lead to.” I was reading a post the other day by blogger Michael Brenner at B2B Marketing Insider, talking about getting your social media game on. Of course, being the skimmer that I am, the first thing that caught my attention and made me go back and read the whole thing was his mention of having a Social Media Hangover. His hangover was induced by sometimes (as we all do) forgetting to… -
The “New” SEO Secret Weapon
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you have a web site, you may have noticed one of two things about the traffic you get from search engines. Your search traffic may have dried up overnight, with once-healthy streams turning into a sad little trickle. Or you may have noticed a nice, steady improvement as you’ve climbed higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), while other sites that used to outrank you suddenly evaporated. There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO. It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see… -
8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read
7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIt’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it. Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them. Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day. What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of: You’d better know how to write a compelling headline You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. -
7 Crucial Tactics for Writing a Wildly Successful Guest Post
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amWe all know that guest posts grow blogs. But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers. Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits. In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post. Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals. Who am I to teach you about guest blogging? -
7 Smashing Social Media Marketing Links
4 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amThis week on The Lede … What really works on Twitter One thing social media copywriters should never do 9 productive social media hacks A reminder of the power of the original social media If you just can’t wait for The Lede every Saturday, and you want even more practical, useable links than the seven we highlight here every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter. It’s painless. Really. // 9 Social Media Hacks You Need to Embrace Now Mr. Baer makes a good case that though social media is inexpensive in monetary terms, it can get good and costly when it comes to spending your…
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Brian Solis
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Meet the Mother of All Processes
8 Feb 2012 | 10:32 amGuest post by John M. Bernard, author of the new book, Business at the Speed of Now, and Chairman and Founder of Mass Ingenuity. Imagine going to work in one of Henry Ford’s factories a century ago, proud that management referred to you a “hand” or a “hammer” or maybe even a “wrench.” The labels reflected Ford’s emphasis on automation and management’s view of laborers as mere cogs in the machine. Screw this nut onto that bolt; weld this strap to that frame; do it over and over and over again until your brain froze with boredom. Of course, management needed workers to get the… -
2011 Was the Year of the Mobile Consumer, What’s in Store for 2012? Value.
7 Feb 2012 | 10:10 amChris Silva, my colleague at Altimeter Group, released a useful report today that I wanted to share with you here. Mobile is important and I believe you know this. However, when we consider mobile, we often think about the experience when and where it begins. But, we often miss the opportunity to lead a more meaningful journey as it may travel from small screen to larger screens across laptops, desktops and beyond. And along the way, we must now determine our role in this journey to provide information, shape decisions, and influence behavior. In Chris’ report, he reminds us that 2011… -
Season 2 Finale: How Yamaha invests in new customer experiences
3 Feb 2012 | 10:52 amThis is it…the Season Finale! And, what a way to end Season 2 of (R)evolution…. In this episode, Yamaha shares what is by far the most expansive view of disruptive technology’s impact on business infrastructure and culture on the show to date. What you’ll see is a genuine discussion with Jeff Hawley and Rick Williams of Yamaha explore how an already successful business is exploring new opportunities to better define the customer experience before, during and after transactions. It comes down to workflow. Nowadays, it either works for you or works against you. Here,… -
Smartphones, Tablets, PCs, The Devices People Use to Discover Information in Social Media (and when)
2 Feb 2012 | 3:13 pmMy friends over at bit.ly published an interesting graph that reveals the devices as well as the days/times that people use different devices and how and when they consume information. As you can imagine, it’s across the board, but as you can see, there are waves that every device follows, except the desktop. Desktops are of course the devices that we can assume people use during work hours. As such, they are most heavily used on weekdays before noon. Interestingly enough, phone traffic peaks at about the same times, but not to similar effects. What’s also telling is that tablets… -
What’s Love Got to Do with It? The 3P’s of Identity
2 Feb 2012 | 6:16 amGuest post by Allison Cerra, author of Identity Shift With the 2012 Presidential election looming, there’s no shortage of polls to help narrow the field of candidates. I find a recent one from Fox News to be particularly fascinating. Among other questions, Republican primary voters were asked which Republican presidential candidate is most likeable and which they would most trust with a nuclear weapon. While Newt Gingrich scored at the top of the heap in earning the trust vote, he scored only marginally well on the likeability scale. The topic was discussed on the network’s “Fox &…
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chrisbrogan.com
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Throw Away the Maps
6 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amPeople judge us by the path they’ve seen us walk before. They can’t anticipate our future steps. We, ourselves, look to how things have been, what seems to be the lay of the land, without realizing that the maps are not the territory. Want to succeed at work? Then don’t try to do your job. Instead, work towards something larger, more meaningful, and something that blends your convictions internally with your best ability to help others externally. Want to create something new? Then throw away the old, or maybe join two disparate old things together into something new. The… -
The Next Social Networks
5 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amThe rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos. What I’m interested in, though, is Gentlemint, which I keep calling “Pinterest for… -
Learn From Adele – Build Your Platform
3 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amJacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience. What Adele Could Teach You About Impact I’m writing something about this right now for my upcoming book with Julien Smith, but I had to share some of the… -
Rob Gokee is a Musical Wizard
2 Feb 2012 | 8:05 amI had such a great experience working with award winning musical composer Rob Gokee. We did some musical work together, and the process was so amazing. Rob helped me create my theme song for Shhh! The Secret Show. So anyhow, he and I sat down to do an interview, and it’s a bit long, but it’s totally worth it. We talk about what collaboration feels like at a distance, what it takes to get music like this made for your own show, and a lot more. Rob’s a hero to me, and has been part of the community for a while. I was so fortunate to have worked with him. Can’t see the… -
Build Your Platform – Start
30 Jan 2012 | 1:30 amThe following is part ONE of a series called Build Your Platform. If you find it interesting, please consider subscribing for free to get the rest of the series. This post is long. You might want to bookmark it for later. The age of social media oversaturation is upon us. People are declaring Twitter bankruptcy to go along with their email bankruptcy. They cite not wanting to start on yet another social network as their reason for not getting more involved with Google+. And just as soon as you start getting into Pinterest, you hear about Path, but wait: there’s Gentlemint, which is…
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@ProBlogger
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6 Powerful Guest Post Tactics that No One’s Talking About
9 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amThis guest post is by Tom Ewer of Leaving Work Behind. Guest posting is a hot topic amongst startup bloggers. It is one of the most widely-adopted blog promotion strategies in existence, and has been made perhaps even more popular by the success of “serial” guest posters such as Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing. His “blitzkrieg” strategy may come across to some as a triumph of quantity over strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth. He understands the key concepts that we will be exploring in this post, and executes them in a highly effective manner. Whilst… -
How to Succinctly Report a Blog Issue to Tech Support
8 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amThis guest post is by Matthew Setter of Malt Blue. How often do you find it happening to you? You discover an issue with your site, or one of your community members emails you to tell you about it, and soon you start to see tweets about it too. Maybe it’s as simple as an error message that detracts from the professional appearance of your site. Perhaps the contact form doesn’t send messages to your contact email address. Or is it that the whole site just displays as a blank page, otherwise known as the white page of death? You’re not a programmer, a software engineer or a seasoned… -
Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger: Part 2
7 Feb 2012 | 12:05 pmThis guest post is by Devesh of WP Kube. A few months ago, I wrote a guest post here called How to Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger. Today, I’ll go into some more detailed advice to help you speed up your site even more. If you’re a blogger, you already know about the importance of blog loading speed, and the role it plays in search engine rank and marketing your blog. But if this is new territory for you, here are three quick reasons why you need to speed up your blog: Google includes website loading speed as an important metric in their ranking algorithm. If you want… -
How I Beat my Best Month Ever by Doing Something Good, Better [Case Study]
7 Feb 2012 | 6:04 amMid-December 2010: on my photography site, we launched a new campaign—our first ever 12 Days of Christmas promotion. The result was my biggest month of earnings ever up to that point. The idea was simple: offer discounts on 12 products over the 12 days leading up to Christmas. I used a mix of my own ebooks and products from other photography sites with affiliate commissions. The result was massive. Not only did we see some great revenue generated, it created some lovely buzz on the site. Due to the success of the 2010 campaign, in mid-December 2011 we launched our second 12 Days of… -
Six Steps to Make Sure Your Site Is Ready to Go Viral
6 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amThis guest post is by Nancy Sathre-Vogel of Family on Bikes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Surely Google Analytics was confusing my site with another, way more popular site. There was no way my visitor numbers could be so high! And yet they were. One of my posts had taken off and was spreading like wildfire. Those viral post phenomena that happen to others were now happening to me. The first day, 17,000 visitors came to my website. The next day we topped out at 56,000. Readers were coming in droves. It was exciting. It was exhilarating. My site, viral! Wow! And then I took a…
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Matt Mullenweg
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LIFE.com
1 Feb 2012 | 5:48 amLIFE magazine has relaunched, powered by WordPress.com VIP. I’m a huge fan of the magazine’s history and the work of photographers like John Dominis. -
On the Evolution of Investing
24 Jan 2012 | 11:59 amToday Y Combinator announced they are adding two new partners, Garry Tan and Aaron Iba. This announcement is unique because it does not list their academic credentials, their previous investments, the boards of companies or non-profits they have sat on, how many years of experience they have, or any of the usual badges of honor investors parade in their biographies and Crunchbase profiles. Instead we get accolades of “rare individuals who can both design and program” and “best hackers among the YC alumni.” Take note of this moment. I was part of a dinner conversation… -
MPAA Threatens Politicians
22 Jan 2012 | 12:43 pmMPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Arent Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought on Techdirt. -
Hollywood and the Justice System
21 Jan 2012 | 6:44 amTwo excellent essays on how Hollywood has completely put our legal system out of whack through years of twisting our legislative process to their ends, or as Shirky put it “imagine the possibility of a longer jail term for streaming a Michael Jackson video than Jackson’s own doctor got for killing actual Michael Jackson?” Andrew Bridges on PandoDaily: Forget SOPA, Hollywood Already Had a Field Day with the Justice System. Clay Shirky on his blog: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood. -
#Reinventing: Chamber of Commerce
18 Jan 2012 | 9:23 amReally great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities.
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SmartBrief on Social Media
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Do you worry that Facebook will start charging brands for Facebook pages after its initial public offering?
8 Feb 2012 | 9:29 am-More- -
Twitter under fire over Brazilian traffic-stop tweeters
8 Feb 2012 | 9:29 amBrazilian authorities are suing Twitter over accounts that publicize the locations of police roadblocks and speed traps to he -More- -
Interested in writing for SmartBlogs?
8 Feb 2012 | 9:29 amEveryone knows that SmartBrief aggregates the best content from around the Web, but did you know we also feature original blo -More- Social Media Content Manager LM&O Advertising -
Doritos' bandito baby wins USA TODAY-Facebook poll
8 Feb 2012 | 9:29 amAn ad featuring a grandmother sling-shotting a baby to snag a bag of Doritos won the USA TODAY-Facebook poll of best Super Bo -More- -
10 ways to write headlines that compel your customers to click
8 Feb 2012 | 9:29 amWithout an eye-catching headline, even the best blog posts and announcements can easily get lost in the often-overwhelming fl -More-
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123 Social Media
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Social Media Training – 40 Questions for the Corporate Team
6 Feb 2012 | 6:26 pmThere are a lot of questions regarding social media training and how it ties into a larger organization. To help with that I’ve collected some of my thoughts in a free whitepaper that highlights some of the critical areas of impact you should be thinking about. You can read through the list of questions I’ve covered below… but will need to download the whitepaper to get some of my value-added thoughts. Some questions to think about… How much does this cost? What forms of social media will reach our business goals? Are there any “low cost” benefits? What are… -
Mobile Media Training – basic questions to think about
16 Jan 2012 | 3:07 pmA day doesn’t go by without someone asking me about mobile media. At first glance it sounds like a relatively simple problem and is usually summarized by a question like “what is the best mobile app for us?” If only it were that simple for a company. The mobile trend is accelerating faster and faster. It isn’t a question of if someone is connected, but how, why, and when they are connected. As a business professional there are dozens of reasons to use different mobile technologies ranging from 3g/4g wireless access, tablet applications, QR codes, GPS services, photo… -
Social Media Policy & Employee Communication
3 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amOur team has been detailing an on-going list of questions clients at 123 have regarding the functional models of employee communication. One of the core elements we continue to discuss is the social media policy frameworks for what is acceptable behavior for different types of industry communications. As part of the social media policy goes, there are A LOT of areas that management and workforce personnel should give some thought to. It boils down to questions… Rather than focus on where we see market trends a going, sometimes the most effective way to figure out where the boat is… -
Social Media Training @ barryhurd.com
18 Nov 2011 | 1:45 pmAs an impromptu weekend post I wanted to share some additional social media training articles I’ve been posting elsewhere. These are some of the most recent social media training articles I’ve written on my personal blog over at BarryHurd.com Some of them are a little more casual than articles I write here on 123socialmedia, but they all have some great tidbits you can learn from and apply to your own business challenges. So without further wait, here are four articles from this month at BarryHurd.com. 40+ Social Media Dashboard Tools for Tracking Stuff Social Media for Sales (why… -
5 Tips for a Social Media Policy
24 Oct 2011 | 9:28 amOver the past few years I’ve personally researched the social media policy of hundreds of organizations, the regulatory conditions in niche industries, and the business risks no one gave attention to. I’ve witnessed the gigantic tidal wave of sites like Facebook force itself into both personal and professional lives, giants like Myspace swell up and fade away, and services like Google flip a switch and declare a new way of doing things. One of the biggest problems facing business leaders is that society at large has adopted the mindset of open dialogue and personal opinion. I personally…
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Social Media Marketing
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Foursquare in Context
29 Jan 2012 | 8:11 pmIf you're a regular user of services like Twitter or Foursquare, you've undoubtedly been met with skeptics and naysayers who wonder aloud, "Why would I want to tell anyone what I'm having for lunch?" or "Why would I care if someone is having a ham sandwich?"Fair enough, but the inquisitors fail to take into account the all-important factor in any conversation, whether it's in person or online: context.Context is what allows us to make sense of much of the world around us. "He's so bad!" could have two very different meanings, depending on the the rest of the conversation surrounding it. With… -
Social Media and Travel
26 Jan 2012 | 9:37 pmIf you're like me, you spend a good deal of time on the road. Whether it's at an airport, on a train or in a car, you're mobile and your digital life is mobile too.The pervasiveness of tablets and smartphones (in addition to the already ubiquitous laptop) is growing daily. Just this week, Apple announced that it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone. It means that more of us are doing things on the web (or mobile web, as the case may be) while we're on the go, and there are certain things those of us in the digital world look for when we travel -… -
Revealing a New Ford in a New Way
13 Dec 2011 | 6:00 pmFord Motor Company has been at the forefront of social media for some time. The Fiesta Movement, the Explorer reveal on Facebook, Doug the Spokespuppet, Ford Social (formerly known as The Ford Story) and being the first brand on Google+ all stand as examples of Ford's success that spans from clever campaigns to a daily commitment to engage.Ford played a significant part in how the automotive industry thinks about social media (and in some cases how large companies think about social media) and now, as we near the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), at Ford we have an… -
Infographic: 5 Companies That Are Rocking Social Media
29 Nov 2011 | 8:47 amThis infographic was created by Voltier Digital, a content marketing agency based in Florida, specializing on the creation and promotion of impactful content marketing campaigns for businesses of all sizes.We all know the usual names of companies that are doing well in social media. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the lesser-knowns and why they've had success, either on an ongoing basis or with some one-off efforts that stood out.And since infographics are all the rage, what better way to look at them? Of course, for SEO purposes, I've listed them here as… -
Twitter Business Guide
7 Oct 2011 | 8:53 pmI was recently introduced to a compact guidebook for businesses trying to get a sense of Twitter. The microblogging site that allows you to update in no more than 140 characters at at time is deceptively complex and nuanced - especially for a newcomer.This short guide, entitled Twitter Business Guide: Communication and Marketing was written by Jean-Christophe Barré and Dr. Andreas Schroeter and in just 32 pages covers some of the things that may be keeping you and your business away from this platform. For someone who is new to Twitter, this e-book will prove a helpful compass as you…
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MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog
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How to Find ROI in the Multichannel Marketing Haystack
9 Feb 2012 | 6:51 amA guest post by Irv Shapiro of Ifbyphone. Admit it: Sometimes, you get knots in your stomach when you think about trying to attach measurable outcomes to all of your company’s multichannel marketing campaigns. The (sort of) good news is that you’re not alone. Even veteran marketers are having a tough time finding ROI in the ever-expanding haystack that is today’s multichannel marketing environment. But the unsettling news is that easy, online tracking tools and a shaky economy have created a C-suite expectation that every dollar spent must be connected to a quantifiable and measurable… -
How Social Media Is Changing the Agency/Client Relationship
8 Feb 2012 | 10:03 amThis week on the Marketing Smarts Podcast, we discuss the evolving relationship between agencies and clients in the era of social media. Our guest is Glenn Engler, CEO of Digital Influence Group, a full-service digital agency with “social media at the core” of everything they do. The jumping-off point for our interview was that “social at the core” position. I wanted to know what that meant, and Glenn explained that, in a nutshell, it doesn’t make sense for an agency to offer “social” as a capability to its clients (as in, “We can also do… -
5 Super Bowl XVLI Ads That Could Have Been Improved with a Mobile Call-to-Action
8 Feb 2012 | 6:49 amMarketers buy into the Super Bowl telecast because it is the one time of the year when consumers are actually tuning in to commercials instead of muting the volume or fast-forwarding on their DVR. Here’s an old school recipe for success: One part new product or service offering upgrade A tear-inducing script (Tears can be a result of hilarity or a message that pulls at the heartstrings.) One teaspoon of a timely message (Think Valentine’s Day and/or tax season.) A cute animal or hot celebrity A tease in the media What’s missing in this day of 24/7 social, mobile consumers? Mobile calls… -
The Questions I Would Ask If I Were Marketing Your Business
7 Feb 2012 | 6:53 amAdvice from Internet marketing pundits is becoming like rock and roll was to a previous generation—it sounds like just a bunch of noise. Every blog-as-media-outlet, thought-leader platform, and social technology company’s website screams top 10 ways to do this and how-to posts to do that. And marketing professionals are left trying to filter the wheat from the chaff. The challenge marketing and brand managers face today, however, is not the basic how-tos of social media. They need less of the top five and top sevens and top 10s, and more content that marries the tactical to-dos… -
How to Deliver Your Sales Pitch, So Folks Listen
6 Feb 2012 | 6:56 amA guest post by Sarika Periwal of karmaCRM. Talking is the best tool of a salesperson. The only way that you have face to face of convincing a person to buy a specific product or service is by convincing them that they need it. This includes highlighting the benefits that the product brings to their life to make it simpler. It also means that to be a successful salesperson you need to have impeccable communication skills. However, this is not an inherent skill but one that has to be developed through practice. Here are a few things that you should keep in mind when you next deliver your sales…
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Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg
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How to Select an Interactive Marketing Agency
31 Jan 2012 | 5:42 amThis is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Check out his earlier posts on How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner and How to Hire Your SEO Partner. It’s very difficult for small and mid-size firms to select the right interactive marketing agency — as evidenced by how often agencies get fired, and how frequently client-agency relationships subsist at a low level of productivity and mutual satisfaction. The best way to prevent agency angst is to select the right agency to begin with. Here are 25 selection criteria to help you do this. I’ve listed the most important ones first,… -
5 Things I’ve Learned from Running BizSugar
24 Jan 2012 | 5:03 amThis is a guest post by Anita Campbell. When my company, Small Business Trends, LLC, first purchased BizSugar in the summer of 2009, the best way I could describe it was as a miniature version of Digg, except that BizSugar focused soley on sharing information geared toward small and mid-sized businesses. This is still true. But as BizSugar has grown over the last couple of years, it’s also become a small business networking site where business owners can discuss issues, get and give advice, and gain insight into the ins and outs of running a small business. As the site has changed and… -
Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online
17 Jan 2012 | 6:04 amThis is a guest post by David Rodnitzky. Having the best prices and largest selection of products means nothing on the Internet if you don’t back it up with incredible customer service. Treat customers badly and you will be out of business – period! Bad customer service will get you banned from major advertising networks, skewered in organic results, and ridiculed on social networks. Here are the top ways consumers can crush your business online. Advertising Bans If consumers complain about your business, your money won’t be green enough to buy advertising online. Both eBay and Amazon… -
How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner
11 Jan 2012 | 5:51 amThis is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Want more? See How to Hire Your SEO Partner from November. After taking the social media plunge, companies quickly discover that it is vastly more complicated and time-consuming than they thought. The normal response is, HELP! But companies must avoid a panicky response, because hiring a social media marketing (SMM) partner requires careful study. As I’ll run down in a minute, SMM involves a wide range of activities that require totally different skills. So, First, we’ll take a look at what the activities are, to help clarify the type of support you… -
Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011
5 Jan 2012 | 5:19 amIt’s my birthday and I have some great news! In January of 2011, I said that I’d make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only. And I did. Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content, the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends – the stuff you use for presentations and proposals, for arguing that social media and online marketing does have a firm place in today’s landscape. The newsletter, which was sent within the first…
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CenterNetworks
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Deal Site Smackdown: The Valentine’s Day Edition
8 Feb 2012 | 6:06 amNext Tuesday is the annual holiday known as Valentine’s Day. The day is named after St. Valentine and over 150 million cards are exchanged – here’s the full history of this very special day. This year the new deal sites are holding a cage match with each site offering a deal with a national floral delivery service. Most of these deals expire asap so you should be quick if you want to grab some flowers for your sweetie. Also note that the delivery fees are higher for a delivery on Valentine’s day. Lastly, I see some of the local cities within the deal sites are also… -
Top 10 Russian Web Startups of 2011
7 Feb 2012 | 5:37 amYakov Sadchikov, President & CEO of visual search engine Quintura, has put together the following list of the top 10 Russian web startups for 2011. In September 2011, Russia became the largest Internet market in Europe with 51 million online users. Who are the top emerging internet companies that disrupt the Russian market. Find out below a list of top 10 Russian web startups of 2011. 1. Oktogo.ru Having raised $5 million in venture capital from European early-stage investors, Oktogo.ru is #1 in Russian online travel. Russia’s ‘Booking.com‘ Oktogo.ru has not only collected the… -
NCR Sells Blockbuster Express Kiosks To RedBox
6 Feb 2012 | 4:27 pmSomehow I thought this year would be the end for the Blockbuster Express kiosk machines. Back in November they changed their pricing model and it seemed like it just became a lot more expensive to rent from Blockbuster Express versus rival RedBox. As an infrequent movie renter, I found the Redbox machines to have a better selection and a better price – and you can nearly always find a free movie rental code for RedBox. Today RedBox has agreed to acquire the kiosks and “other assets” from Blockbuster Express. RedBox notes in their release that the deal is worth up to $100… -
Shark Tank Recap – February 3
3 Feb 2012 | 6:48 pmBelow is a recap of the February 3, 2012 episode of the ABC show Shark Tank (episode 301). If you are unfamiliar with Shark Tank, the concept is simple – entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and the investors have to provide at least the amount the entrepreneur is seeking for a deal to be completed. Pitch #1 – Chord Buddy Founder Travis Perry created a plastic gadget that you place onto an acoustic guitar to help you learn how to play the guitar. As you learn how to play, you remove pieces of the Chord Buddy until you have completed removed the gadget and are… -
SXSW Releases 2011 Demographics
1 Feb 2012 | 1:46 pmAnother year, another SXSW festival coming up in just a few weeks. What will this year’s event hold? Last year seemed like a big shift for both the event and for attendees. The event was split up into many locations (I think this was a huge mistake), more commercialization than ever and it seemed like lots of people came to Austin but didn’t buy a badge – they just surfed the hallways of the convention center and also attended lots of Sixth Street non-official events. Each year the event grows larger and hotel rooms display sold out signs earlier and earlier. I wonder if…
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Brass Tack Thinking
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The Great Irony of Social Velocity
26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 amI had a brilliant conversation with Justin Kozuch last evening on Twitter. If you don’t know Justin, you should. Smart, introspective, determined to find more in all of this, just like I am. I really like talking with him because he’s always looking more closely at something, which is a rare and wonderful quality in humans and it delights me when I find it. We were talking about feeling the need to “push the envelope” more in social conversations. I’ve even said this myself, many times, about needing to step into more uncomfortable territory. But as we were… -
The Power of Slow Thinking
21 Jan 2012 | 2:29 pmI had a bit of an epiphany this last year. Contentious discussions can be stressful for the best of us. Some people are formally schooled in the art of debate, and I am not one of them, so often I blamed my discomfort in confrontation or extended debate on the fact that I really wasn’t sure how to do it properly. Even watching debates online between other people makes me cringe. (At some point I realized that it was more because those ended up being mud-slinging, juvenile name calling fests more often than actual discussions or intelligent debates about valuable topics. But I digress.)… -
Take Back Your Attention
16 Jan 2012 | 6:00 amThe amount of attention we have to give is finite. The receipt of attention is earned, both initially to capture it, and continually to keep it. No one is entitled to it, ever. The online experience you immerse yourself in is, to a large degree, under your control. You can give your attention easily with a click, and add information to the stream you take in. But never forget that you can remove it as easily, and sometimes you absolutely should. I’m not a fan of the piling-on, lynch mob tactics that seem to be doled out as routine punishment for online misbehavior. I’m also not…
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Usability Counts
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Shit Interaction Designers Say
9 Feb 2012 | 8:24 amPosted over at Johnny Holland. Brandon Stephens, Axure? Really? -
Social Media Explained in Donuts
8 Feb 2012 | 2:56 pmCourtesy of Douglas Wray. Very funny. And true. -
Ghost in the Pixel: Intimacy and Arrogance in UX
8 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amReputation and trust is essential in a world where we don’t meet the people we do business or trust our information with. The reality of this world is that many companies have much more information about us that we prefer to have (or, what does VISA know about your buying habits online or at a physical adult bookstore?). But that’s different, because we’re making a conscious choice to share information by making that purchase. Only when companies don’t disclose their intentions (like downloading our entire address book, for example, and then explaining that since it… -
UX Booth: Usability Fact vs. Fiction
7 Feb 2012 | 8:34 amThat’s about right: Usability is user experience The fundamental difference is “Can easily use” vs. “Want to use”. Let’s take the best possible example here – the usability guru: Jakob Nielsen’s website. Usability guru that he is, his site is very functional and easy to use. But how do you think it scores on user experience? Would visitors love to browse the site for better experience? The answer is no. Again, there are some practitioners who believe building a good user experience is all that’s needed for making the site usable. That had led to the myth in… -
Silly Saturdays: Shit People Say in Los Angeles
4 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pm
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PsyBlog
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Multiple-Choice Tests: Why Sticking With Your First Answer is (Probably) Wrong
7 Feb 2012 | 6:34 amWhat's the best strategy for taking a multiple-choice test? The standard advice for multiple-choice tests is: if in doubt, stick with your first answer. College students believe it: about 75% agree that changing your first choice will lower your score overall (Kruger et al., 2005). Instructors believe it as well: in one study 55% believed it would lower students' scores while only 16% believed it would improve them. And yet this is wrong. One survey of 33 different studies conducted over 70 years found that, on average, people who change their answers do better than those who don't (Benjamin… -
Duck/Rabbit Illusion Provides a Simple Test of Creativity
31 Jan 2012 | 10:06 amAre you creative? Try this simple test... The well-known known illusion above can be seen in two ways: as both a duck and a rabbit. Which do you see first? And if you see one, can you also see the other? Most people see the duck first and can flip between the two representations, but the question is: how easy is it for you to flip between them? Does it require real mental strain, or can you do it at will? Wiseman et al. (2011) had a hunch that the ability to flip between representations is related to creativity. To test this participants were given a simple test of creativity which involves… -
Powerful People Feel Taller Than They Really Are
24 Jan 2012 | 9:05 amExperiment demonstrates how a powerful feeling feeds back into self-perception of height. Language can reveal all kinds of truths about our psychology. Take these expressions: He's the big man on this project. We look up to her. Lady Gaga is huge. He puts her on a pedestal. It's not hard to see the strong association here between size and power that's embedded in the way we talk about the relations between people. The reason why is almost too obvious to bother stating: larger people quite often do have more power. As children our parents, teachers and all our authority figures are taller than… -
Why Stories Sell: Transportation Leads to Persuasion
18 Jan 2012 | 10:10 amPsychological research on persuasion suggests that stories which transport people are more likely to be persuasive. Marketers have known for years that stories are a powerful tool for persuading people. That's partly because stories (unlike statistics) are easy to understand. That's why politicians try to persuade us by telling stories about their vision of the world. They do spout statistics as well, but normally only in support of some kind of grand narrative. We instinctively understand that people resist being told what to do, but will respond to the moral of a story. So we try to… -
The Amazing Power of Regret to Shape Our Future
12 Jan 2012 | 8:41 amWhy people are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, but will happily exchange pens. Regret might not make a list of the most powerful emotions. It would probably include things like anger, happiness, jealousy, sadness and especially for us English, embarrassment. We tend to think of regret as essentially a backward-looking emotion. We regret things in the past, like not trying hard enough in school, how we treated a friend or the things we said to our partner in the heat of an argument. In this sense you might argue that it's useless: why regret something you can't change? But regret isn't…
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The Heart and Craft of Life Writing
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Memoir: Breaking Through to the Next Level
8 Feb 2012 | 7:35 amOver the last few days I’ve read two memoirs back-to-back, Margaret Overton’s Good in a Crisis and Jonna Ivin’s Will Love For Crumbs. Both stories revolve around disastrous relationships with men. I was struck by the fact that although these two women had very different backgrounds and their stories are quite different, each had to piece together the puzzle of her mother’s life to break free and follow a different path. I was reminded of computer games where you must find all the hidden tools to advance to the next level. As I thought about this similarity, I realized how universal… -
Writing Around Obstacles
4 Feb 2012 | 2:24 pmAs anyone who has written more than a dozen life stories or begun a memoir knows, some stories flow onto the page more smoothly and easily than others. What do you do when a story jams up? What do you do when you start writing and realize you aren’t going where you thought you wanted to go? Let me use this blog post as an example: I originally intended to write it to highlight Andrea Hurst’s AUTHORNOMICS Interview Series, which features weekly interviews with literary agents, editors, authors, marketing experts and more talking about their opinions on the publishing industry, writing, and… -
A Picture Can Spark a Thousand Words
28 Jan 2012 | 6:42 amNothing can get words and memories flowing for a life writer quite like a picture. Whether you’re journaling, writing a simple story or crafting a memoir, pictures can bring back memories as fresh as wet paint, and having the picture as a focal point may enable you to revisit the memory from many angles. The general wisdom is that looking through your own photo stash will spur memories. I gave an example of how that can work in Photographic Memory Jolts, in October 2007. Before the days of digital cameras, most people only took photos on special occasions, so reminders of… -
Writing Out the Tough Times
19 Jan 2012 | 6:01 pmNancy Pogue LaTurner is that author of Voluntary Nomads, a book I reviewed a couple of months ago. Read the review for general information about the book. For now I’ll simply say that I was mesmerized by the grace and compassion with which she wrote an account of a time when her husband became involved with Another Woman. After some brief correspondence, I asked Nancy if she would consent to an interview about the experience of writing that account. She did. Here it is: SL: You made a brave decision to write about an affair your husband became involved in for a time. Many wives who remained… -
When Your Story Flips Upside-Down
15 Jan 2012 | 4:21 amA high school acquaintance recently pulled me into a Facebook group for people who grew up in Los Alamos – my tribe! They have posted pictures of historic scenes around Los Alamos and a lively forum-type discussion has sprung up about who remembers what and how. A fascinating sort of collaborative story is emerging with a type of shared, collective memory, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. One of the members is a retired LAHS chemistry teacher who arrived soon after I left. At some point I posted this comment: Was Mr. Etherly still there when you arrived at LAHS? Or Mr. Cooper? Mr. E…
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PR-Squared - Social Media Marketing and Public Relations
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Open Letter to Havas CEO David Jones
8 Feb 2012 | 8:12 amHi Mr. Jones. I caught your MSNBC interview this morning with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski re: your new book, Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business is Better Business. You made some excellent points re: how transparency, authenticity and speed will win the day for corporations; about how companies who expect to do well must increasingly expect to do good, as it is becomes ever easier for consumers to suss out egregious behavior and punish bad actors (from un-friending to public humiliation). This is all well-worn territory for Social Media geeks, of course, but it’s always good… -
Facebook IPO is Good for Everybody
6 Feb 2012 | 6:35 amDepending on who you ask, the Facebook IPO will result in boundless glory or is destined to be remembered as the final pinprick in an impending burst of the current tech bubble. For my part, whereas in the past I likened Facebook to previous Walled Garden successes like AOL (the AOL of the early 90′s, not the AOL of today – which is a SHIFT client!), in the past 18 months or so I’ve only been impressed by Facebook’s ability to embed itself across the larger, open expanses of the Web. It “rides alongside” us as we surf, versus dictating how and where we experience the… -
Susan G. Komen PR Disaster: Lessons Learned
3 Feb 2012 | 11:27 amWow. It’s been nearly two weeks since my last blog post. Sorry about that. I was out sick. And wow, what a crazy time to sit on the sidelines… Facebook IPO. Hello! More on that in a future post. Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood. Sheesh! Let’s talk about that! (Caveat: I am a Blue State progressive; whose mother died of breast cancer; who marched on Washington as a college student in support of women’s rights; and whose dear-departed grandmother spoke with horror of the days prior to Roe v. Wade. Got all that? You’ve been warned.) Just as I started… -
It’s the End of the Web as We Know It … or, Speed Kills
23 Jan 2012 | 9:46 amThose of you who follow me on other social nets like Twitter or Facebook know that I am pretty opinionated when it comes to politics. Suffice to say that I am a card-carrying member of the “Liberal Coastal Elites.” (I try not to over-indulge or bore folks with it; and I certainly can play nice with my right-leaning friends.) I bring it all up only as a segue to the fact that I am a big fan of Andrew Sullivan’s Dish blog. Sullivan’s one of the big dogs in blogging; he’s been freshly-empowered by his move to the Daily Beast to experiment… -
Thoughts on a Twitterversary
19 Jan 2012 | 7:18 amLet’s take a ramble. One of those automated spambots on Twitter informed me that today was my 5–year anniversary of microblogging. Wow. Five years. Really? What was I up to five years ago? I was living in Boston, in-between my family’s quinquennial moves to San Francisco. My brain was on fire, as I’d hit upon a worthy successor to the Social Media News Release concept and was just a couple of weeks away from debuting the Social Media Newsroom template. As I look back, 2007 was a prolific time for the entire Social Media industry. It was not only the year Twitter…
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Content Marketing Today
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Content – A Seven-Step Road Map for Your Content Marketing : MarketingProfs Article
3 Feb 2012 | 10:17 amContent – A SevenStep Road Map for Your Content Marketing (7 step road map for creating content marketing.)…Via www.marketingprofs.com -
A Social Media Primer For Neophytes-How To Populate Your iPad or Tablet – Town Hall
3 Feb 2012 | 10:15 amUSA TODAY–A Social Media Primer For Neophytes-How To Populate Your iPad or Tablet Town Hall.There has been an explosion in social media networks over the past ten years. The younger set gets it, and aggressively uses them.Via finance.townhall.com -
How the Third Wave of Media Is Transforming Marketing Content
3 Feb 2012 | 10:14 amThe third wave of media is here. Here’s what you have to do to transform your marketing content along with it.Via blog.hubspot.com -
Building a Brand for Gen Y [CONVO] | Social Media Today
3 Feb 2012 | 10:13 amA brand is much more than its name. A great brand will trigger an emotional reaction and, perhaps, a sense of belonging. In social media domains, it should create a motivation to share.Via socialmediatoday.com -
Managing Content Marketing: Expert Interview with Joe Pulizzi
1 Feb 2012 | 8:24 amWhat is content marketing?What makes it different from other types of business communications, and why should local businesses adopt a content marketing… See the video interview below to learn from content marketing guru, Joe Pulizzi: Via www.business2community.com
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Published and Profitable Writers Tips Blog
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Lessons in book cover design from 2011′s best promo ebooks, Pt. 2
6 Feb 2012 | 3:31 amWriting and publishing success begins with front covers that attract the reader’s eye, engage reader interest, and contribute to the author’s personal brand. The front cover of Danny Iny’s 241-page Engagement from Scratch!is an excellent addition to my ongoing series of design lessons from the front covers of 2011′s best promotional ebooks. In fact, it was one of the ebooks that sparked the series. (You can read Part 1 here.) Front covers set the stage The front cover of Danny Iny’s Engagement From Scratch! is its “openness” and apparent simplicity. -
20 Questions to Ask Before You Write a Book – free mind map
2 Feb 2012 | 10:35 amBefore you write a book to build your personal brand, get a free copy of my 20 Questions to Ask Before You Write a Book mind map. The 20 questions address the fundamental Publishing Success issues that must be answered as early as possible in order to avoid disappointment and wasted time. Authors can immediately use the mind map as a planning tool after downloading the free MindManager format map at Mindjet’s Maps for Thatsite. 20 Questions to Ask Before You Write a Book includes instructions for using the map as a framework for answering questions using MindManager’s online,… -
How to Own Your Niche
31 Jan 2012 | 5:06 pmStephanie Chandler’s latest book, Own Your Niche, is a credible and useful 1-stop source of information, details, & examples for Internet marketing success. There’s a lot to like in Own Your Niche, subtitled, Hype-Free Internet Marketing Tactics to Establish Authority In Your Field and Promote Your Service-based Business, including: Just enough information. When you know your topic inside and out, like Stephanie, having built and promoted several successful online businesses, it’s easy to write an encyclopedia–when all readers really want is a fresh perspective and… -
Free mind map of visual thinking resources
27 Jan 2012 | 5:29 pmDownload a free mind map of visual thinking resources tracing sketching, recent mind mapping innovations, and several current bestselling business books. Get a fresh perspective on using sketching and mind mapping to solve complex business and writing problems like choosing book titles, creating a table of contents, & preparing book marketing plans. The map includes links to examples and reviews. Visual Thinking Resources traces the origins of today’s growing interest in mind mapping and its popularity on mobile devices and the popularity of using simple sketches to solve complex… -
Free coaching call to discuss obstacles to writing a book
25 Jan 2012 | 3:54 pmJoin a teleseminar call addressing the question, “What’s keeping you from writing a book?” during a Published & Profitable’s free book coaching call. When asked what’s keeping them from writing and publishing a brand-building book, most people mention one, or more, of the following: I’m not creative enough. I don’t know what to write about. I don’t have the time. I’m not a good enough writer. I don’t know where to begin. And, there may be others! But, are these really the reason more books aren’t written? Or, are there other factors at work?
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How Not To Write
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Not Writing Is Like A Warm Bath
18 Jan 2012 | 5:34 amI don’t really want to go back and look at how long it’s been since I sat down to Write (yes with a pretentious capital ‘W’). I know it’s been months, but to be fair it’s really been years. Sometimes I look back to my best writing days and see it as another lifetime. A human life is made of many little lifetimes, overlapping yet often so distinct as to be held as a perfect memory separate from the whole. For me, the little lifetime was six years. I locked myself in a room nearly each and every day and wrote for several hours. I wrote two novels, several… -
The Dreams We Leave For Those Who Follow
9 Jul 2011 | 6:13 amThis post is more about writing than you might think. Yesterday, I watched the launch of STS-135. Maybe you did too. Before the launch I texted my son to make sure he was watching too. It was just a few minutes before lift-off and he scrambled to make sure everyone in the house was watching. Later that night, I asked him what he thought about it. He thought it was sad because the program was over. I asked him what he thought about private companies going into space. He said, “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” I asked why, and he replied, “Because there’s… -
The Old Man and the Tweet
3 Jul 2011 | 10:31 amWIRED has a post about what Hemingway would think of the Internet. The author is a little young to be writing about Hemingway. He’s not even 30, but if you read his bio you’ll see that it’s really just tongue in cheek (or rather some other body cavity) humor he’s after. It’s unfortunate though. With a little effort, the author could have taken a fluff plug for his new book and turned it into something poignant. He could have sliced off about half of his monologue intro, dropped into the fairly predictable jokes quickly and then discussed what an older Papa would… -
Return to Writing in Six Steps
22 May 2011 | 5:59 amYesterday, I was frustrated, pessimistic. I was disappointed and pissed off. Today is different. I’ve taken steps to ensure that the coffee is up to snuff, but you can’t really avoid it. The down times, I mean, not the coffee. Problems with coffee can always be avoided. You just dump out the pot and try again. With writing, not so much. When I’ve been Not Writing for awhile, I tend to get melancholic. You might recognize these symptoms in yourself. You take a favorite book down and read some words. You think, “How the hell did this writer find the time to do… -
Slow and Steady
21 May 2011 | 7:03 amI am reading an essay I’ve read many times before. It’s a travel piece, but it’s also a discourse on philosophy an exposition of the human soul in all its basic forms as told through the lens of a journey from war to sunshine. How is it, that when we read a piece like this, one that we’ve tread over many times… we find ourselves caught up in just a few words that seem to have slipped our attention. This turns into a sudden realization, a spark of profound insight which ignites the imagination and calls us to do the bidding of the universe or in some cases to bend the…
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Weblog Tools Collection
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WordPress Theme Releases for 2/9
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amAqua is a crisp, clean, and bright theme with small touches of aqua as an accent. Gridly is a clean, minimal, and responsive theme with a simple options panel. -
Printed WordPress Magazine to be Released Shortly
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amWPCandy Quarterly, a WordPress related quarterly print magazine from the folks at WPCandy, is just about to be mailed out to the lucky readers who either pre-ordered or subscribed. To my knowledge, or at least about half an hour of searching, this may very well be the first ever printed WordPress magazine publication. The first issue will feature articles from 11 well-known contributors, and due to demand from the pre-orders, 2,000 copies are making their way through the printers as you read this. A lot of thought went into the design of this magazine, and you can see a video blazing through… -
WordPress Plugin Releases for 2/7
7 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amNew plugins Google AdSense and Google Analytics Remover will prevent AdSense ads and Analytics tracking code from displaying when you are logged in. Updated plugins Custom Field Suite allows you to visually manage custom fields. Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. -
BuddyPress Codex Gets a Refresh
6 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amIf you’re a fan of WordPress, you probably know about the WordPress Codex, the massive community-editable source of WordPress documentation. Just yesterday, the BuddyPress core team gave a massive update to the BuddyPress Codex, making it easier than ever to learn how to use the #1 social networking platform plugin for WordPress. Even though the new BuddyPress Codex may function like a traditional Wiki, it’s actually built on top of WordPress and BuddyPress. After all, why not show off some of the cool things you can do with a platform while you learn how to use it? -
WordPress Theme Releases for 2/5
5 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amBlush is a soft, warm, feminine theme in tones of rose and cream. Boozurk is a clear theme with a lot of features. The Frances Wright is a clean and elegant theme.
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Online Marketing Blog » Blogging
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Online Marketing News: Say NOPA to SOPA, Google+ Strikes Again, Coca Cola “Gets It”, Twitter Gobbles Up Summify
20 Jan 2012 | 4:31 amThe Social Job Seekers The social media job market is hot! This infographic visualizes the 2011 Social Job Seeker Survey that was conducted by Jobvite. It examines who the job seekers are and how they are utilizing social media to find jobs. Some interesting statistics you may not be aware of: 61% of all employed Americans are open to a new job or actively looking for a new one. 4 out of 10 job seekers are “Super Social” and have 150+ contacts on Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. 1 in 6 job seekers found their last job through an online social network. This Week in News About Google… -
Social Media & Blogging Listmania with Curated Resources & Lists
16 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amBeing included on a popular list of credible resources like our own BIGLIST of top Marketing Blogs or one of the many other collections of useful resources posted online can feel pretty satisfying, validating the hard work many are putting in to their business blogs. Great lists get socially shared, linked, and emailed, giving those included quite a bit of valuable exposure. By association, the list publisher also gains value in terms of exposure, links, and a connection with list participants. Curation is essential for sorting through the mass of data published online and with the closer… -
4 B2C Examples of How Companies are Using Twitter to Attract & Engage Customers
3 Jan 2012 | 3:36 amIf you are a B2C company, interaction on a social platform like Twitter can increase engagement and even sales if executed properly. Small businesses like Tender boutique in Birmingham, Michigan have promoted special offers on Twitter and sold out in just a few days. Social interaction via platforms like Twitter allow companies to gain a true understanding of their prospect base and serve as a real-time source of market research. Customer engagement is a key benefit of executing a B2C Twitter marketing strategy. A recent survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey found 67% of Twitter users are more… -
Blogging On A Budget: 3 Tips for Bigger Impact
29 Nov 2011 | 5:00 amBlogging is one of the top sources of online content creation for many companies. Blogs are a great vehicle for interacting and engaging with current and prospective clients. Blogs are also an effective way for prospects to associate stories, anecdotes, and personalities with a company or brand. Taking on a blog can be a large undertaking. There are many things that should be considered including cost, availability of resources, strategy creation, time commitment, and measurement. Simply creating content and expecting instant success is not realistic. If you have recently decided that… -
The Dynamic Duo of Business Blog Marketing: Optimize & Socialize
25 Nov 2011 | 3:59 amBlogs are often rated one of the top content marketing tactics for attracting and engaging customers and eMarketer has reported blogs reach over 50% of the internet audience. But many companies fail to combine two of the most important tools for boosting relevant traffic and reach: Optimization for search engines and for social media. Most marketers and bloggers understand the basics of a good business blog and the notion of search engine optimization but often focus more on keywords than the customers that are actually searching. Adding keywords to blog posts is a common SEO tactic but…
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Daily Blog Tips
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New Backlink Analysis Tool
8 Feb 2012 | 3:56 amSince Yahoo! closed the Site Explorer service bloggers and webmasters (myself included) were left without any solid alternative. I have been looking for similar tools since then, and an interesting one I found recently is called ahrefs.com. It’s a paid service, but there are many free tools you can use on their website as well. For instance, right on the homepage you can type your domain name and click on “Explore Links” to get an overview of how your website is doing. As you can see from the screenshot above you get a lot of data back. For instance, you can see the total… -
Come Join the Social Media Club
7 Feb 2012 | 4:37 amBack in 2009 I created two clubs, one called “Retweet Club” and the other one called “Facebook Club”, where members would share each other’s content, with the goal of increasing social media traffic to their blogs and websites. The clubs worked as mailing lists (using Google Groups), but eventually the activity died down. The main reason was the following: sharing wasn’t fair. A member could be selfish and only send requests to the club, without ever sharing the content from other members. A couple of weeks ago I started thinking about what could be a… -
How Many Posts Should You Write Each Week?
5 Feb 2012 | 7:01 pmWhen I started blogging, four years ago, many experts advised posting daily – to increase traffic and keep readers hooked. And many popular blogs do post every day (at least on weekdays). Should you post every day, though? Probably not. Why? Because: If you write two posts each week instead of five (or seven), those posts will be much better written. If you only post once or twice a week, you’ll usually find that you get more comments on each post. If you don’t post too frequently, readers may actually read every post, instead of one in five. If you don’t use up all your ideas in the… -
How Much Does A New Customer Cost?
3 Feb 2012 | 8:28 pmFor someone who is about to start up their own business, whether online or not, this is an essential question to ask. When you sell a product or service you need someone to make a purchase so you can make money. The most important principle in business is that there are two different types of people involved in your business; customers and clients. While both of these may appear at first to be the same they are critically different and concentrating on one over the other can be the difference between success and failure. This concept, what I call the $1 Customer, I teach to clients in order… -
10 Ways to Ensure No-One Will Read Your Content
2 Feb 2012 | 8:44 pmSo many bloggers put tons of time and effort into getting more traffic – but perhaps that sounds like trying way too hard. Your ideas are so awesome, your personality so strong, that readers will just come to you. I’m going to give you ten straightforward ways to make sure the whole world knows you’re not going to pander to your readers. (Oh, and if you would like to have a few more readers – try doing the opposite of everything on this list.) 1. Give Your Post the First Title You Come Up With You’re in a hurry, right? So your post will do just fine with the…
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Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog
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What Business Bloggers Can Learn from Hobby Bloggers
6 Feb 2012 | 6:15 amThis is a guest post by Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com While business bloggers have the ultimate goal of attracting prospective clients, hobby bloggers have a whole other set of motives. Here are just three of them, along with some ways you can apply them to your business blog: Free Your Passion Hobby bloggers have the liberty to indulge in deep exploration of their passions, wherever that journey takes them. In an earlier article about what happens when artists call their art a hobby, I noted how that "means freedom from the creative constraints that might be involved once you… -
Six Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers
27 Jan 2012 | 6:20 amBloggers can never get enough advice about SEO. This is a guest post by Chrisian Arno at Lingo24. Six Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers When a blog forms part of your marketing strategy, you need to be confident your words will reach the right people. With search engines constantly refining their algorithms, not to mention the huge amount of information competing for your readers, this can seem like an impossible task. Here are six strategies that can help you regain your confidence with SEO.Do Your ResearchIf you are someone who dashes off blog posts when inspiration strikes, slow… -
Blogging Without Dates - The pros, the cons and meeting in the middle
6 Jan 2012 | 6:45 amThis is a guest post by Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com In his October 2011 post about why you no longer need a blog (in the traditional sense), John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing predicts that soon our content will "no longer be consumed in chronological fashion." When Jim Connolly of Internet Marketing Jam explored the question of why people remove dates from their blog posts, in the end, he came to the conclusion that for his blog, the benefits far outweighed any risks. What are the pros of blogging without dates? What benefits did Jim Connolly see? People were spending more… -
Pitching to bloggers - the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching
22 Dec 2011 | 6:25 amThis is a guest post by Kristy Shaw of Punch Communications. Pitching to bloggers… the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching Life as a PR has certainly changed over the last few years; with the rise in popularity of blogs it has meant having to adapt the way I pitch to different types of media. Bloggers can be just as influential as many print publications and therefore should always be on PR agencies radars. Pitching to bloggers is a world away from traditional pitches to journalists; there are many more things to take into account. For example, in contrast to traditional media… -
Two Tips for Generating More Leads on Your Business Blog
19 Dec 2011 | 6:55 amRecently I joined the Social Media Biz School as an instructor. In the video below, I share a couple of the business blogging tips to give you a taste of the kind of strategies, tactics, tips and tools you'll be learning in the free 27 minute webinar on demand: How to Generate More Leads with Social Media... [Can't see the video in your blog reader? Click here to watch on YouTube.] You can get instant access to the free webinar here. Your instructors are: Viveka von Rosen (LinkedIn), Lori Gama (Twitter), Andrea Vahl (Facebook), Lou Bortone (Online Video) and me (Blogging). Get…
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Delicious/tag/blogging+tips
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How to Write a Blog - How to Write a Blog That People Want to Read
9 Feb 2012 | 7:48 am -
58 ways to build a better blog
9 Feb 2012 | 7:48 am -
Blogging Tips - Blogging Guides, News, Tips, Resources
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21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch
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21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012) | SEOmoz
9 Feb 2012 | 7:31 am
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WordPress News
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Year of the Meetup
27 Jan 2012 | 12:17 pmWe hereby declare 2012 as the Year of the WordPress Meetup. You’ll want to get in on this action. meet·up \mēt-əp\ noun A meeting, especially a regular meeting of people who share a particular interest and have connected with each other through a social-networking Web site: a meetup for new moms in the neighborhood; a meetup to plan the trip; a meetup for WordPress users.1 So what is a WordPress Meetup? Basically, it’s people in a community getting together — meeting up — who share an interest in WordPress, whether… -
Internet Blackout Day on January 18
17 Jan 2012 | 3:18 pmWordPress.org is officially joining the protest against Senate Bill 968: the Protect IP Act that is coming before the U.S. Senate next week. As I wrote in my post a week ago, if this bill is passed it will jeopardize internet freedom and shift the power of the independent web into the hands of corporations. We must stop it. On January 18, 2012 many sites around the web — from small personal blogs to internet institutions like Mozilla, Wikipedia, reddit, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – will be going dark in protest and to drive their visitors to sites like americancensorship.org to… -
Help Stop SOPA/PIPA
10 Jan 2012 | 11:18 amYou are an agent of change. Has anyone ever told you that? Well, I just did, and I meant it. Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know… -
WordPress 3.3.1 Security and Maintenance Release
3 Jan 2012 | 1:24 pmWordPress 3.3.1 is now available. This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K., and the Go Daddy security team for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team. Download 3.3.1 or visit Dashboard → Updates in your site admin. -
WordPress 3.3 “Sonny”
12 Dec 2011 | 2:58 pmThe latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard. WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports. Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are the cat’s pajamas: For Users Experienced users will…
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David Risley dot com
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Don’t Use GoDaddy
9 Feb 2012 | 6:27 amWhy so many people end up doing business with GoDaddy, I have no idea. But, of course, I must look in the mirror. As I used to use GoDaddy for my domains. Well, not anymore. Like many who’ve been in online business for awhile, I owned a lot of domains. Close to 90 of them, actually. I have been meaning to ditch some of them that I realized I’d never use. But, in the process, I’ve decided to transfer the ones I’m keeping away from GoDaddy. I’m switching everything to Namecheap. In fact, I’ve been slowly working on this for many months now. But, recently,… -
Reality: Click-Through Rates On Banners Suck. What To Do?
8 Feb 2012 | 9:10 amBanner ads continue to be the de facto way to make money with a blog – or so it seems. But, the headline says it all: click-through rates on banners are typically pretty horrible. This has an effect on everybody involved: Advertisers get increasingly more desperate to make their ad campaigns work, which leads to lower pay-outs, more annoying banners, etc. The end users end up being barraged with ever-increasing amounts of ads, thereby leading them to be even MORE likely to dismiss them. The blogger, looking to generate some revenue, ends up making less money with more ads. The Problem… -
Why Periodically Deleting Email Subscribers Makes Sense [Subscriber Re-Engagement]
6 Feb 2012 | 8:12 amWhat if I told you it might make sense to delete a bunch of email subscribers from your email list? Would you think I was nuts? Well, let me explain why it isn’t nuts. And, in fact, it might be something you want to do on an annual basis. Engagement > Numbers Simply put, the number of email subscribers who are actually paying attention to you and act on what you say…. is FAR more important than the size of your list. I’d rather have a list of 1,000 people who open every email I send them than a list of 50,000 who mostly don’t open my emails and just send my stuff to… -
Weekly Round Up: Google Hates Your Blog?
3 Feb 2012 | 12:30 amAs I do each Friday, I’ll share some of the cool stuff I came across around the blogosphere in the last week. This week, we have the 10 commandments, Google hatin’, one HUGE list post from handome Chris Brogan, and some of what’s happening over on Pinterest. Let’s get going… How to Make Skype Play Nicely with Google Voice This was a purely geek post that I shared earlier in the week. Not so much about marketing. But, hey, I’m a geek. Plus, I’m a big fan of using cheaper, cloud-based alternatives where possible. Why even have an office phone these… -
6 Uncommon Techniques For List Building
1 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amA lot of great questions have come in for the “20 Questions” webinar next week. Make sure to RSVP for it. We all want to build up our email lists and get more subscribers. And the common way to go about that is to offer an “ethical bribe”, or “free giveaway”. And, in almost all cases, this ends up being an ebook. In some niches, an ebook is still a rather novel idea. However, in a growing portion of the Internet, free ebook giveaways are getting so common that the effectiveness of the offer has dropped a lot. Of course, much of this comes down to how well…
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Widgets Lab
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Droid Razor MAXX Unboxing [video]
2 Feb 2012 | 4:43 amRelated posts:Unboxing the Motorola Triumph — Virgin Mobile [video]Motorola DROID RAZR vs HTC Rezound [video]DROID Bionic Review [video] -
Winner Poker for Android is the Rolls Royce of Poker apps
1 Feb 2012 | 2:02 pmFind the two best poker games in one app!Enjoy Omaha High and Texas Hold’em Poker in a unique app on the Android Market! Texas Hold’em is referred to as the “Cadillac of Poker” by poker legend Doyle Brunson. We can refer to the Winner Poker app as the Rolls Royce of Android poker apps. Apart from the awesome graphics, user-friendly interface, excellent gameplay, and smooth functioning on every Android device the app shines out due to the following opportunities it gives:Social Rewards and Entertainment. Socializing is the major advantage standing behind our Winner Poker app. It… -
LG Spectrum Review [video]
24 Jan 2012 | 9:56 amThe LG Spectrum is currently the top smartphone offered by LG.Here is a two part video review from wirefly.com2nd partsource: http://www.wirefly.com/learnRelated posts:Schmackdown! HTC Rezound vs. LG Spectrum – YouTubeLG myTouch Review [video]HTC Rezound vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus [video] -
ClockworkMod Recovery for the NOOK Tablet (backup, restore, install updates) – Liliputing
23 Jan 2012 | 11:12 amClockworkMod Recovery for the NOOK Tablet (backup, restore, install updates) – Liliputing.I have to share this as it is almost unprecedented how cool this is!Liliputing to the rescue for delivering this great news.ClockworkMod Recovery is a utility that allows Android phone and tablet users to completely backup or restore their device, erase data, or install custom software. Up until recently there was no easy way to install ClockworkMod or any custom recovery on the Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet, but hackers have made great progress working around the tablet’s locked bootloader… -
Evi is a Siri clone for Android
23 Jan 2012 | 10:31 amEvi one-ups Siri for iOS and Android – SlashGear.I love Android…if you haven’t noticed. And I always like to see some innovation in the app department…even if it isn’t really original. The popularity of Siri on the iPhone is undoubtedly the reason for all the Siri clones coming to the Android Market. Here is another one for you to try out and decide for yourself.https://market.android.com/details?id=com.trueknowledge.android.eviRelated posts:Vimeo launches Android, WP7 mobile apps; previews revamped iPhone, iPad apps | VentureBeatGroup Messaging with GroupMe for…
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WIDGET NEWS - Google News
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ANOTHER mild day! - WLBZ-TV
9 Feb 2012 | 4:06 amANOTHER mild day!WLBZ-TVTo find out more information about driving traffic to your content or to place this widget on your site, visit outbrain.com. We welcome your feedback at feedback@outbrain.com. View our privacy policy here.and more » -
Ecwid users experience significant Facebook revenue growth - BizReport
9 Feb 2012 | 2:12 amEcwid users experience significant Facebook revenue growthBizReportEcwid recently released some statistics about the use of its ecommerce widget. by Helen Leggatt Started in 2009 by Ruslan Fazlyey, Russian ecommerce widget Ecwid (pronounced "eck-vid") allows businesses to develop a single store that can be embedded on -
Spongecell Gets $10M Series B, Continues Growth in Ad Tech - Xconomy
8 Feb 2012 | 10:00 pmBradenton HeraldSpongecell Gets $10M Series B, Continues Growth in Ad TechXconomyThe company, founded in 2006, initially offered a widget platform for ad agencies to use for online promotions. When that did not bring in enough business and Spongecell's cash ran … Next Page » João-Pierre S. Ruth is a correspondent for Xconomy based Spongecell Creates Interactive AdvertisementsAdvertisement JournalSpongecell snaps up $10M for interactive Web adsVatorNewsMeet Spongecell, a Profitable Ad Tech Company With $10 Million in New FundingAll Things Digitalall 5 news articles » -
Android Ice Cream Sandwich Calendar Widget Shows Secret Google Plans - MotoringCrunch
8 Feb 2012 | 7:14 pmAndroid Ice Cream Sandwich Calendar Widget Shows Secret Google PlansMotoringCrunchIf you happen to have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus in your pocket then it is time to whip it out and launch the calendar widget as Google may have left a little taste of things to come in the future for you to see. Reddit user Convict3 stumbled upon the and more » -
Two New Brands Move to TradoLogic - San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
8 Feb 2012 | 1:06 pmTwo New Brands Move to TradoLogicSan Francisco Chronicle (press release)HotTrader, having chosen TradoLogic's OEM solution, will use the trading engine, integrating it into their site using the unique TradoLogic widget technology. The widget feature is a solution exclusively available at TradoLogic, using the most and more »
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Widgetbox
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Thème central en mars2012:«Les jeunes et la viole»
8 Feb 2012 | 2:08 pmThème central en mars2012:«Les jeunes et la viole» -
Schwerpunktthema März 2012 «Jugend und Gewalt»
8 Feb 2012 | 2:08 pmSchwerpuSchwerpunktthema März 2012 «Jugend und Gewalt»nktthema März 2012 «Jugend und Gewalt» -
St. Paul Library
7 Feb 2012 | 4:33 pmPublic Library Events & Classes -
UKWSCC_T117
6 Feb 2012 | 1:56 pmwest sussex county council latest leader's blog -
UKWSCC_T118
6 Feb 2012 | 1:56 pmWest Sussex County Council Latest news
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WordPress Hacks
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7 Benefits of Blogging with WordPress
2 Feb 2012 | 7:20 amOne of the most popular blogging platforms out there is WordPress — and for good reason. WordPress offers a flexible platform that is easy to use. You can get started blogging with a few minutes, and be well on your way to blogging success. If you are trying to figure out which blogging platform is right for you, here are 7 benefits to blogging with WordPress: 1. It’s Cost-Efficient One of the great things about WordPress is how cost-efficient it is. You can start blogging for free. WordPress is a free, open source platform that allows you to reach your audience free of charge. -
How to Monetize Your Blog Without Selling Your Soul
30 Dec 2011 | 8:11 amSellout….It is the ugliest word that’s routinely hurled at creative individuals of all types. This goes for writers, artists, musicians and anyone else who makes a living (in part or in whole) on the back of their creative endeavors. That being said, money and art have to mix at some point. You need your money to support your art, whatever it may be, and that is equally true for bloggers and other authors online. So how do you make money from your WordPress blog without selling your soul? There are many different ways you do that, but it’s important to find the right model that… -
3 Reasons Mobile WordPress Themes Trounce Mobile Subdomains
19 Dec 2011 | 6:36 amMaking your website mobile-friendly isn’t just a good idea – it’s a necessity. With more people accessing the Web via smartphones and tablets these says, any site administrators who haven’t “mobile-equipped” their online real estate are well behind the curve. In 2011, do you really want to miss out on a substantial chunk of traffic just because your site is hard to read on an iPhone? Of course not. That’s why many sites direct mobile traffic to sub-domains (e.g. “example.com” becomes “mobile.example.com”), a workable solution if… -
Don’t Build WordPress Plugins Into Your Themes
5 Dec 2011 | 5:25 amA couple of weeks ago, I read a post on WPLift “Build A Plugin (Twitter Widget) into your WordPress Theme)“ which in turn was inspired by a post on WPCandy from a couple of months ago “How to create your own WordPress functionality plugin“. The WPCandy post was advocating that theme designers should stop bundling WordPress plugins and other functionality which limits how easily users can switch themes, something which I feel is absolutely a good idea. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post — I want to focus specifically on the issue raised… -
Build Custom Facebook Page Themes Using a WordPress Plugin
31 Oct 2011 | 4:36 amOver the past couple years it has been impressive to see Facebook craftily grow its influence beyond the Facebook.com domain and expanding all throughout the internet. For example, it seems just about every major website now allows you to login using Facebook. With Facebook’s growing influence over the internet it isn’t surprising many WordPress developers have really stepped up, providing a number of great free and premium WordPress plugins to help improve WordPress and Facebook integration. Once of my most recent Facebook plugin discoveries came from the developers…
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Ogilvy PR 360 Digital Influence Blog
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Pinterest Hits 11 Million UMVs (and 8 Tips for Brands)
8 Feb 2012 | 9:02 amIn case you haven’t heard, last night TechCrunch announced that Pinterest hit 11.7 million UMVs, becoming the fastest standalone site ever to surpass 10 million monthly uniques. This presents a huge opportunity for brands, as you might have already read about here. The #1 driver of consumer purchases is word of mouth recommendations from friends, and Pinterest holds the power to drive authentic “word of eye” recommendations in a way that is changing the landscape of social commerce. How? The landing page for Pinterest is an endless visual stream of subtle product… -
Retailers: Take Social a Step Further
6 Feb 2012 | 10:22 pmAs retailers find their feet in social marketing, it would be interesting to know why they started down the road in the first place. All too often the answer is, “Because my customers expect me to be on Facebook.” Often “So I can push promotions” tops the list. But isn’t it great when the answer is, “I wanted to learn more about a few of my biggest fans, and leverage their influence to generate repeat visits at end of the purchase funnel?” This we don’t hear often. Social-savvy retailers understand that their platforms aren’t just another… -
Preparing for the Social Media Bowl
5 Feb 2012 | 1:57 pmWe’ve been watching social media chatter around the “big game” intensify over the past week – especially if you live in Indianapolis. But since Volkswagen first teased its teaser ad with the barking dogs (and garnered over 11 million views along with way), the ad community has slowly followed suit and rolled out their wares. Consumers that wanted to gain clout (and Klout) passed it along as quickly as possible. But will two weeks of conversation or two minutes of 1.5 million tweets (like those amassed around Tim Tebow’s heroics this season) sway opinion, increase favorability or… -
Sh*t We Say: Lessons from a Long-Tailed Meme – Part 2
31 Jan 2012 | 8:58 am(Part 2? Yeah, check out Part 1.) In case you missed it, Ron Paul supporters, ASU students, and VFX artists were among those that joined the fray since my last post. The variations continue to proliferate further down the tail, satirizing - and entertaining - more niche audiences. What does this add up to? Segmentation. While I easily enjoy Sh*t ASU Students Say even though I’m not a Sun Devil - and haven’t even been to the campus - the video resonates better with those who were. Beyond that, the video’s arc is more relatable to students who enrolled in the past 5-10 years… -
The Updated Ogilvy Social Media Engagement Code
29 Jan 2012 | 10:23 amFirst of all, this isn’t new. We have had a social media-related ethics code in place since 2005. At that time, it was the Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics. It helped us decide what was ‘best-practice’ and what wasn’t. These are our ethics not something handed down through culture or a governing body. We simply believed that social media’s true power was grounded in trust — trust between bloggers and their readers; between brands and their followers; between marketers and customers. The updated code covers more contemporary circumstances. Facebook for one.
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PUBLIC RELATIONS NEWS - Google News
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Is Draghi Talking PR Lessons From Trichet? - Wall Street Journal (blog)
9 Feb 2012 | 8:38 amIs Draghi Talking PR Lessons From Trichet?Wall Street Journal (blog)By Todd Buell Observing Mario Draghi's vague answers when asked what the ECB would do about Greece, one might think that Mr. Draghi is taking lessons in public relations from his predecessor. Today's press conference was nicely book-ended by questions and more » -
Green Savoree Reappoints Torchia Communications as Public Relations Team for ... - MarketWatch (press release)
9 Feb 2012 | 7:04 amGreen Savoree Reappoints Torchia Communications as Public Relations Team for MarketWatch (press release)TORONTO, ONTARIO, Feb 09, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Torchia Communications announces that it has renewed its relationship with Green Savoree Racing Promotions (GSRP) to plan and implement public relations efforts for its two street-course race and more » -
North America's Largest Cleantech Public Relations Firm, Antenna Group ... - MarketWatch (press release)
9 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amNorth America's Largest Cleantech Public Relations Firm, Antenna Group MarketWatch (press release)9, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- In a move that expands its presence and capabilities to the European market, Antenna Group, Inc., North America's largest public relations firm dedicated to clean and renewable energy technologies, announced it has and more » -
MediKeeper Selects High-Tech BtoB PR and Marketing Firm Arketi Group for ... - MarketWatch (press release)
9 Feb 2012 | 6:02 amMediKeeper Selects High-Tech BtoB PR and Marketing Firm Arketi Group for MarketWatch (press release)DURHAM, NC, Feb 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Arketi Group, a high-tech business-to-business public relations and digital marketing firm, has been chosen by MediKeeper, a leading health information integration company, to lead strategic marketing and more » -
Oak Street Funding Selects Clarus Communications to Lead Public Relations Efforts - MarketWatch (press release)
9 Feb 2012 | 3:22 amOak Street Funding Selects Clarus Communications to Lead Public Relations EffortsMarketWatch (press release)CHICAGO, IL and INDIANAPOLIS, IN, Feb 09, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Clarus Communications ( www.teamclarus.com ), a business-to-business (B2B) public relations agency focused on driving revenue growth for clients, has been tapped to lead public and more »
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Social Media PR Blog Feed
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EndGame PR’s Steve Mullen on WRVA Radio
2 Feb 2012 | 5:53 pmAnother media opportunity popped up for EndGame PR’s Steve Mullen this week. This time he was interviewed by WRVA Radio’s Jay Hart about the impact of the Facebook IPO on everyday Facebook users. Clips from the interview were used during several newscasts. Here’s a taste… No tags for this post. -
EndGame PR’s Steve Mullen on NBC12
28 Jan 2012 | 1:12 pmIf you watched the NBC12 (WWBT in Richmond, VA) news at 11pm on Friday, January 27 or the station’s morning show on Saturday the 28th, you may have seen me talking about social media privacy with Yvette Yeon. If you didn’t, here’s the video … after a commercial message: No tags for this post. -
Can Google+ Become Your “Default” Social Media Outlet?
22 Sep 2011 | 9:12 amI’ve been participating in an interesting discussion on Facebook this morning about the future of Facebook, and it led me to this blog post. The discussion centered around a question posed by Jeff Kraus. He wondered, and I quote, “How many brands are rethinking the priority they place on their FB presence given the unpredictable nature of the platform these days?” The overwhelming opinion from those who chimed in was that right now brands and businesses have nothing to fear, because while Facebook has made a lot of changes that have ticked off its user base, the growth… -
Facebook Creeping Toward Google+
15 Sep 2011 | 10:59 amFacebook made an announcement this week that once again shifts the ever-evolving service. The subscribe button added by the social media service allows you to subscribe to public updates posted by anyone on the site — even if they’re not your Facebook “friend”. This move is being widely reported as making Facebook more like Twitter. I think those who are reporting that are missing something — this new feature makes Facebook more like Google+. On Google’s new social media service, you can add anyone to a circle, which adds their public updates to your… -
Apparently You Need to Meet Me
10 Aug 2011 | 5:41 pmA big “thanks” to Work It, Richmond, a website and newsletter produced by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This week they included me in a feature called “People You Need to Meet”. The feature is an interview about me and EndGame PR. You can check it at this link: People You Need to Meet: Steve Mullen. No tags for this post.
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Media Bullseye
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Talbots gets social media
8 Feb 2012 | 11:15 amShort post today–but wanted to highlight a brand that seems as though it truly understands social media. Disclosure: I’m a fan, have a bunch of their clothes, and have one of their store loyalty point cards. I’ve also written about them before. So now that is out of the way, the point. Today, Talbots highlighted a blog called Zilredloh on their Facebook page. The woman behind the blog likes to sew, and is clearly talented. And the project on her blog that Talbots pointed to? It was about how she re-created one of their dresses. Talbots did not issue a takedown order. They… -
The care and feeding of your media monitoring account
2 Feb 2012 | 11:25 amHappy Groundhog’s Day! The little groundhog, known affectionately as Punxsutawney Phil, did see his shadow this morning no thanks to overcast skies and a chance of showers. According to legend, this means six more weeks of winter. Even Potomac Phil, the DC counterpart, is predicting a month and a half more of cold and snow. Both traditional media and social media are abuzz today with tidbits about these “whistle pigs.” These creatures require a good bit of tending to keep them in top weather-predicting shape. They need to hibernate each winter and eat a healthy, vegetable rich diet. … -
Radio Roundtable: Social46 “Super Mess”, McD’s Tweets, and bias in PR
27 Jan 2012 | 12:20 pmThis week, I was joined by co-host Doug Haslam of Voce Communications, a Porter Novelli company. We talked about the social media issues brought up by the Social46 program in Indianapolis, McDonald’s sponsored Tweet problem (and how they recovered), and whether neutrality and objectivity are even possible in PR. This week’s show is 26 minutes long. First, Doug and I discuss Jay Baer’s post about Klout and the bruised egos that surfaced after individuals were selected to participate in a social media program designed to build “buzz” on Indianapolis, site of the… -
How the Internet is proving Tip O’Neill wrong
26 Jan 2012 | 8:00 amThe late House Speaker Tip O’Neill said “all politics is local.” It’s a mantra in politics, and is frequently at the core of Public Affairs programs. It makes sense: if you are appealing to a population that is defined by a geographical area (a voting district) you must keep the issues that are of importance to that specific area at top of mind when speaking to them. But I think we’ve reached a point, because of the Internet, that candidates can no longer rely on this adage as gospel. We are so connected and it is so easy to share news items that while the need… -
PR and the Choppy Waters of Celebrity Endorsement
25 Jan 2012 | 12:34 pmWe don’t talk much about the celebrity endorsement/marketing side of PR here on Media Bullseye–mostly because I tend to think that celebrity endorsement, while presumably effective considering its widespread use, tends to play into a stereotype of PR that I generally don’t care to reinforce. (That PR=publicist.) It is also an area that I think may be overrated, when examining the benefits versus the possible risks–celebrity endorsers have on occasion made rather large splashes in the water during their falls from grace. The use of the celebrity promoter persists, so I…
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Bad Pitch Blog
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Stunt or Strategy? BPB News Analysis
6 Feb 2012 | 3:08 amWe've been wanting to reverse engineer pitches for awhile now -- initially to figure out wtf might posses someone to send us pitches about "Affordable Home Decor " and interview opps with Snooki. Yes, THAT Snooki. I mean, are there more than one? Sweet fancy mustard we hope not.This post analyzes two different news stories I saw on CNN yesterday -- before the Super Bowl pre-game kicked in. Google confirms that both stories are making a ton of news. Let's look at some of the reasons why.Chronicle's Flying PeopleChronicle is a movie about "friends who gain powerful superhuman… -
Gawker Follows Our Lead
16 Jan 2012 | 10:05 amWe've worked with Gawker in the past to help further our cause. Trying to change the industry from the inside out has been an ongoing task (psst, our sixth birthday is this Friday!).And, while we're proud of the progress we've helped create, we've learned over the years that we need all the help we can get.Our friend Hamilton Nolan knows of our valiant quest and he's "reaching across the aisle" on behalf of the fourth estate to help us out with his new blog item: PR Dummies. Hat tip to Judy Gombita for alerting us to the homage.It's great to see someone follow our lead. This is a case… -
3 Ways National Media Use Social Media to Find Sources
16 Jan 2012 | 9:44 amWe've seen some interesting examples of how journalists are sourcing stories via social media. Here are three national journalists using three different social media platforms to get things done. And in this MLK edition, we've also got some tips for being a better source via social media.The New York Times: social media editor Liz Heron on FacebookLiz sourced several quotes via Facebook and even followed up with her sources after the fact. It's a reminder to PR people that everyone's quotable -- regardless of what platform they might be on.CNN/MTV: author Brenna Ehrlich on… -
New Year, New Content
3 Jan 2012 | 6:15 amHelp The Bad Pitch Blog suck less in 2012.If you want more trending, less trailing and no tired* content in 2012, we need your help.Leave us a comment on this post, drop us an email or send us a tweet if there's a specific topic you'd like to see us discuss in the future. Richard and I try and give you what you want to read vs. what we think you want...or what we want to write about.It's All About YouWe're knocking the dust off this blog in 2012. The best way to give you what you want is to simply ask. So thanks in advance for your comments and feedback.And yes it really is all about you. -
5 Reminders of Word Choice's Importance
2 Jan 2012 | 9:00 amWhat's in a Word? A lot. A chain of links this morning reminds us of the importance of word choice.A Tale of Two ClichesYou're thinking, "But we also say, 'don't sweat the small stuff.'" There's some substance in this trite phrase as well. Word choice shouldn't paralyze us or slow us down. But there's a happy medium between clear, concise Hemingway-style writing and writing that helps differentiate us that also makes sense.So here are a few reminders of how important word choice is, starting with this video from Good magazine on URLs.2) The best invoice terms to get you paid faster:…
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PerkettPRsuasion - The PerkettPR Blog
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Influencers Who Inspire: Broadcast and Social Media Editor, Lisa van der Pool
7 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amThis week’s interview in our “Influencers Who Inspire” series is with Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal. Lisa has been a Broadcast editor and Reporter at the Boston Business Journal since 2005. At the BBJ she covers advertising, small business, legal services, retail and hospitality; and maintains the newspaper’s Twitter account. She also regularly appears on WBZ-TV Channel 4 discussing the top business stories of the day. Prior to joining the BBJ, Lisa worked at Adweek Magazine for five years, where she covered advertising and PR firms across New England. -
Influencers Who Inspire: Enterprise Software Blogger, Michael Krigsman
1 Feb 2012 | 6:51 amThis week in our “Influencers That Inspire” series, we interviewed Michael Krigsman, who provides us with some great tips on IT security as well as some insight on his personal love of photography. Michael Krigsman is a recognized, international authority on creating IT project success and related CIO issues. One of the most respected enterprise software bloggers, he has written about 1000 posts on enterprise software, cloud, CRM, ERP and alignment between IT and lines of business. In addition, he has written thought leadership reports for analyst firm IDC on project portfolio… -
Persuasive Picks for week of 1/23/12
27 Jan 2012 | 8:21 amWebProNews writer Drew Bowling shows how social media was used in the workplace this past year in Facebook Accounts For 80% Social Media Traffic World-wide and other fun facts about social media at work. Dr. Trevor Davis provides commentary on the excitement and usefulness of social media in his ZDNet post titled Listen to social media and find out what’s trending Lara O’Reilly of MarketingWeek says that Brands can’t afford to #fail when it comes to social media crisis… in her latest report. Allie Gray Freeland gives MarketingProfs readers a lesson in PR 2.0 in this… -
Influencers Who Inspire Series: Ramon Ray of SmallBizTechnology.com
24 Jan 2012 | 7:19 amWe begin our PerkettPR “Influencers Who Inspire” series with a chat with Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com. Ramon is a journalist, technology evangelist & editor of Smallbiztechnology.com, author of “Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses” & “Technology Resources for Growing Businesses” and a national, in-demand speaker. What made you choose journalism as a profession? I didn’t choose it, it chose me and it was quite accidental. I just really loved to write and so I started writing, then one day… -
Keeping up with the Kardashian Brand
20 Jan 2012 | 9:03 amKardashian. Even if you don’t want to, you know the name. You may watch the slew of reality television shows associated with the name (Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kourtney & Kim Kardashian Take New York, Khloe & Lamar). Or perhaps you shop at Dash (the Kardashian boutique) or Sears (the Kardashian Kollection clothing line). Or maybe you’ve read and weighed in about Kim Kardashian’s scandalous divorce with basketball pro Kris Humphries. Was it real? Was it fake? Was it all for money? Regardless, the name is everywhere (perfumes, weight loss supplements, jewelry, fitness…
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Brian Solis
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Meet the Mother of All Processes
8 Feb 2012 | 10:32 amGuest post by John M. Bernard, author of the new book, Business at the Speed of Now, and Chairman and Founder of Mass Ingenuity. Imagine going to work in one of Henry Ford’s factories a century ago, proud that management referred to you a “hand” or a “hammer” or maybe even a “wrench.” The labels reflected Ford’s emphasis on automation and management’s view of laborers as mere cogs in the machine. Screw this nut onto that bolt; weld this strap to that frame; do it over and over and over again until your brain froze with boredom. Of course, management needed workers to get the… -
2011 Was the Year of the Mobile Consumer, What’s in Store for 2012? Value.
7 Feb 2012 | 10:10 amChris Silva, my colleague at Altimeter Group, released a useful report today that I wanted to share with you here. Mobile is important and I believe you know this. However, when we consider mobile, we often think about the experience when and where it begins. But, we often miss the opportunity to lead a more meaningful journey as it may travel from small screen to larger screens across laptops, desktops and beyond. And along the way, we must now determine our role in this journey to provide information, shape decisions, and influence behavior. In Chris’ report, he reminds us that 2011… -
Season 2 Finale: How Yamaha invests in new customer experiences
3 Feb 2012 | 10:52 amThis is it…the Season Finale! And, what a way to end Season 2 of (R)evolution…. In this episode, Yamaha shares what is by far the most expansive view of disruptive technology’s impact on business infrastructure and culture on the show to date. What you’ll see is a genuine discussion with Jeff Hawley and Rick Williams of Yamaha explore how an already successful business is exploring new opportunities to better define the customer experience before, during and after transactions. It comes down to workflow. Nowadays, it either works for you or works against you. Here,… -
Smartphones, Tablets, PCs, The Devices People Use to Discover Information in Social Media (and when)
2 Feb 2012 | 3:13 pmMy friends over at bit.ly published an interesting graph that reveals the devices as well as the days/times that people use different devices and how and when they consume information. As you can imagine, it’s across the board, but as you can see, there are waves that every device follows, except the desktop. Desktops are of course the devices that we can assume people use during work hours. As such, they are most heavily used on weekdays before noon. Interestingly enough, phone traffic peaks at about the same times, but not to similar effects. What’s also telling is that tablets… -
What’s Love Got to Do with It? The 3P’s of Identity
2 Feb 2012 | 6:16 amGuest post by Allison Cerra, author of Identity Shift With the 2012 Presidential election looming, there’s no shortage of polls to help narrow the field of candidates. I find a recent one from Fox News to be particularly fascinating. Among other questions, Republican primary voters were asked which Republican presidential candidate is most likeable and which they would most trust with a nuclear weapon. While Newt Gingrich scored at the top of the heap in earning the trust vote, he scored only marginally well on the likeability scale. The topic was discussed on the network’s “Fox &…
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RONN TOROSSIAN: 5WPR CEO - PR FIRM, PR AGENCY, NEW YORK PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY OWNER
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PUBLIC RELATIONS STUNT, CRISIS PR AGENCY & THE DEFINITION OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
7 Feb 2012 | 8:26 amSome random thoughts, and recommended reading courtesy of Ronn Torossian of 5WPR: You don’t say ? Public Relations stunt ? http://www.wetpaint.com/jersey-shore/articles/jersey-shore-pa-admits-invitation-to-jwoww–snooki-was-pr-stunt How a U.S. PR firm cleaned up Rwandas image: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/how-a-us-agency-cleaned-up-rwandas-genocide-stained-image/article2322005/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2322005 “Building Public Relations in Saudi Arabia”: http://arabnews.com/lifestyle/offbeat/article571486.ece Susan G. -
COPING WITH STRESS: RONN TOROSSIAN, MARK BIRNBAUM, MICHAEL MALIK, ELIE HIRSCHFELD
7 Feb 2012 | 5:11 amOwning a Public Relations firm, 5WPR, stress is always a factor. Public Relations is a 24/7 business and 1 never knows what comes next. Some tips which allow me to cope: Take pre-planned vacations (preferably in another time zone so you get free time before office hours start – as even a vacation for an [...] -
INTERESTING PUBLIC RELATIONS STORIES THIS WEEK:
6 Feb 2012 | 11:10 amSome interesting reading I came across this week I wanted to share: –“Bad PR Move, Susan B. Komen” (They just may need a crisis PR Agency) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/el-chanclaso/bad-pr-move-susan-g-komen_b_1251316.html – Public Relations face of Goldman Sachs to leave firm http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/02/02/lucas-van-praag-the-public-face-of-goldman-to-leave-firm/ – Indianapolis Getting Great Super Bowl PR So Far http://www.theindychannel.com/news/30330062/detail.html – Kris Humphries [...] -
MADONNA: MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS GENIUS!
5 Feb 2012 | 6:06 pmIn what was clearly a great Super Bowl half-time show, Madonna did a great job of entertaining the millions watching the game – and in doing so scored a Public Relations coup in reaching a new generation of fans, with guest appearances with today’s stars including LMFAO, Cee Lo Green, Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. Madonna [...] -
RECENT READING OF A PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY OWNER
2 Feb 2012 | 8:34 amWanted to share my 2 most recent reads: Edit “Running the Gauntlet” by Jeffrey Hayzlett – I enjoyed it a lot as it shared read details about how to build business, grow business and the need to adapt. I know Jeffrey (and he quoted me a few times in the book), and he’s a seasoned [...]
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Sub:stantial
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An introduction to Pinterest
9 Feb 2012 | 12:47 amPinterest is no doubt on the radar of most people working in digital at the moment. And rightly so. The headlines it’s generated thus far leads us to think it’s going to be the next big thing in online sharing and consumption, and recent news today shows that it has been generating revenue from day one. A claim that even the most popular social networks can not make. With this in mind I’ve put together an introductory presentation on what Pinterest is and how it’s being used. An Interest In Pinterest View more presentations from Stephen Davies -
Getting in to photography
17 Jan 2012 | 9:18 amAny tips and/or advice welcome… -
New York PR Pros on Twitter
19 Oct 2011 | 8:22 amI’ve been researching the New York PR market and I figured the best way to get a deeper understanding of it is through social media. Listed below you’ll see Twitter handles for NY PR professionals from a number of agencies and a sprinkle of in-house departments. It is by no means exhaustive and if you would like adding to the list you can send me an @reply on Twitter, let me know in the comments of this post or send me an email here. Likewise if you want removing from the list please do the same. I’ve also added the handles to a PeerIndex group (which you can find embedded… -
How to be a successful independent consultant
8 Sep 2011 | 2:21 amEarlier this month was a milestone in my career as on 1st September I celebrated my third year working as an independent consultant. It’s been quite a ride so far and a massive learning experience from both a professional and personal point-of-view. You learn a lot about yourself when the onus is on you and only you to win business, retain the business and, ultimately, make money. You might even say the rewards are sweeter when every penny of the money you invoice comes directly back to you, excluding HMRC‘s share, of course. Working for yourself is not for everyone. Some people… -
Social media is still a specialism
5 Jun 2011 | 4:14 pmSteve Rubel says it’s the “end of the road for social media gurus” and I disagree. I think there’s a long way to go before people stop earning a wage from specialising in social media. It reminds me of the whole “PR is dead and blogging killed it” meme from 2006. These are the reasons I wrote in the comment section: As someone has already alluded to, in early adopter sectors (e.g. tech) this may be the case but in numerous other sectors it is not. In the last two weeks I’ve spoke with people from different sectors (charity, housing and retail to name…
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Deirdre Breakenridge
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#PRStudChat Talks Time Management Tips on February 15th
6 Feb 2012 | 5:40 amThe New Year is off to a great start. We’re focusing on our resolutions and trying to accomplish many tasks in one day. With school and work projects, and family responsibilities too, the biggest question is always: How do you manage your time to be more efficient and to achieve your goals? Recently a PR student and fellow PRStudChat community member, Keith Hayes, who attends Flagler College in St. Augustine Florida, reached out to me with a time management question. He wanted advice on “juggling a number of different projects at one time.” I emailed him my list of time management… -
How Evernote Helped Me To Write My Book
30 Jan 2012 | 6:11 amIt was the greatest feeling to neatly pack up all of my chapters in a zip file and ship them off to my executive editor. It took about three months to write the introduction and 10 chapters for my book, “Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional.” By far, the quickest writing process for me yet. About a week ago, I publicly thanked my husband on Facebook for “putting up with me” during the writing process homestretch. And, now it’s time to give thanks to the note taking software that kept me organized from draft outline through to final… -
January #PRStudChat Recap: Guest Post By Jim Joseph, President of Lippe Taylor
23 Jan 2012 | 6:09 amA Guest Post By Jim Joseph Last week I had the distinct privilege of being a guest host on #prstudchat. At first I was excited to be invited, thinking that someone out there thought I was a stud. But when I realized it was going to be full of students … well as a professor at NYU I jumped at the chance! I am a big believer in the overall brand experience as a way to think about marketing a product. But the truth is there are lots of people who have theories about marketing. For me, it’s less about theory and more about practicing and observing and learning and reapplying. … -
The Social Conference 2012 – Eight New Strategic Practices for the PR Champion
16 Jan 2012 | 5:56 amOn February 9, 2012, I’ll be joining my colleagues in Amsterdam to deliver a keynote on Eight New Strategic Practices for the PR Champion. As a part of the preparation for the event, The Social Conference 2012, I was asked to discuss a few topics. My video focuses on several of the “hot” topics in PR and how professionals today are taking on new roles and responsibilities. These topics include: the differences between the old and the new PR mindset, the impact of social media on the relationship between journalists and PR pros, how social media requires a unique and powerful new… -
Special Announcement: The #PRStudChat Community Kicks Off the New Year on January 18th
9 Jan 2012 | 6:28 amHappy New Year #PRStudChat friends! We’re ready to kick off 2012 by focusing on the customer experience. On Wednesday, January 18th 2012 at 8:30 p.m. ET, the #PRStudChat community will discuss how using public relations creates a better brand experience. Joining us on the 18th is our special guest Jim Joseph (@JimJosephExp), President of Lippe Taylor, and the author of The Experience Effect: Engage Your Customers with a Consistent and Memorable Brand Experience. Jim is an expert in building brands that offer consumers unforgettable experiences. He will share his expertise on how to…
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The Content Marketing Revolution
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What Can a Super Bowl Ad Buy You in Content Marketing?
6 Feb 2012 | 7:14 amSo, another Super Bowl gone. For those who advertised during the Super Bowl, the average cost of a Super Bowl ad this year was $3.5 million to promote their brand in front of 111 million viewers. For those counting, that’s $116,000 per second. Back in 2008 I looked at how much content marketing you could buy for the price of a Super Bowl ad. Four years ago, the price for a 30-second-spot was $2.7 million (folks, in this market, the economy is working just fine). That bought you A LOT of content. Today, you can buy even more. Here are a few examples. 47 Issues of Your Own… -
Lethal Generosity: The Key To Your Online Content Strategy
2 Feb 2012 | 6:16 pmThe concept of Lethal Generosity was first coined by social media pioneer Shel Israel in 2008. Simply put: Lethal Generosity is the concept that the most generous members of any social media company are the most credible and influential and as such, they can devastate their competition in the marketplace. In short, the company whose representative posts the most tips, links, advice, case studies, best practices that followers find useful will always [rise] to the top, not just in influence but also in search results. The more outbound links you post, the more inbound links you are likely… -
47 Essential Social Media Tools for Content Marketers
1 Feb 2012 | 9:29 amIt’s hard to believe the sheer number of social media tools we use everyday to help grow the Content Marketing Institute and SocialTract, as well as my own personal brand. Since there are so many, I decided to update this post from almost three years ago. It’s amazing the number of social media and content marketing tools that I continue to use, as well as the many that died over the years from lack of use. Which ones am I missing that you cannot live without? [disclaimer: many of the tools below are CMI partner tools] The Basics LinkedIn - Start the practice of connecting… -
McDonald’s Social Media Goes Wrong? Not a Chance
26 Jan 2012 | 4:49 pmYou’d have to be living in a cave not to be aware of the now historic McDonald’s Twitter campaign launched a few days ago. If you’ve been out of it for a while, here’s the CliffsNotes version: McDonald’s promoted a Tweet using the Twitter hashtag #McDStories that went like this: ‘When u make something w/pride, people can taste it,’ – McD potato supplier #McDStories http://t.co/HaPM5G9F‘ (source). The link is a video of McDonald’s potato supplier Frank Martinez and includes a heartwarming story about his life as a potato farmer. -
Tablet Content Marketing: Crazy Stats and Time to Move
25 Jan 2012 | 4:14 amIf you are not up on the latest statistics on the tablet, here are some to chew on: Apple reported first quarter earnings, selling over 15 million iPads during the quarter. This is a 111% increase from the previous quarter. In just under two years, Apple has now sold over 55 million units. According to Pew Internet’s latest findings, the share of Americans who own a tablet computer nearly doubled from December 2011 to January 2012. The number of Americans now owning at least one tablet device is now at 29%. Tablet: The Curl-Up Device Historically in marketing, we have talked about…
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Online Marketing Blog
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Good Content Marketing vs. Great Content Marketing: Learn the Difference From Joe Pulizzi #OMS12
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you are part of the online marketing or content marketing industry you have undoubtably heard of Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) and his company the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). Joe has been a member of the content marketing community for over a decade, and has made it his mission to help brands create quality content and distribute that content through multiple online channels. This was my first time seeing Joe speak and he made it a great interactive experience, and was of course wearing his trademark Orange. I enjoyed the history that Joe shared with the audience as well as his… -
Innovative Search Features Drive Engagement – Paul Vallez #OMS12
8 Feb 2012 | 3:30 am"Google taught us how to search." - Paul Vallez Paul Vallez admits that when he started at HP less than a year ago he had just come from Ask.com and was pretty cocky about what he knew. Vallez also shares that he wasn’t very open to new ideas and wanted to step into his new position at a big brand and immediately demonstrate value. What was his approach? 75% Cocky 25% Open to new ideas In Vallez’s presentation he identified what he called “3 Key Learnings” that he shared with the audience for improving the way that your search strategy is implemented for… -
#Optimize This: Online Marketing Summit 2012 Presentation
6 Feb 2012 | 7:21 amI’m headed to (hopefully) sunny San Diego today for the annual Online Marketing Summit conference where I’ll get to present on one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Of course, if you read Online Marketing Blog very often, you’ll know my definition of optimization is a bit different than traditional SEO. My post last Thursday “Are You Optimized?” touched on this. The competition for attendance during the breakout sessions at OMS is really tough during the time slot I’m scheduled for. SAP, Wider Funnel and SAP are all presenting at the same time as… -
Online Marketing News: Facebook IPO, Harmonize with Google+, Pinterest Dominates Traffic
3 Feb 2012 | 4:55 amFacebook in Numbers: Prior to the IPO The big news in social media and business this week is Facebook’s new IPO. This infographic from statista and creative commons shares some very interesting figures about Facebook, before it goes public. Highlights include: In 2012 Facebook is expected to reach: 90% of U.S. Social Network Users & 60% of Internet Users. Assuming a valuation of $100 billion, Facebook would be work 67 to 100x’s it’s estimated 2011 net income. The Social Media Buzz “How to Harmonize Google+ With Your Other Social Platforms” Search Plus has placed even more… -
Essential Shifts in Online Marketing: Are You On Board? Are You Optimized?
2 Feb 2012 | 7:21 amIs your company adaptable? Is your marketing optimized? I think most online marketers get the fact that marketing and communications on the web is a fast changing place and that most companies are structured to move at a slower pace than the digital world is evolving. Take for example, the notion of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s been around for about 15 years or so and in just the past few months Google has made the most significant changes ever. Despite the crystal clear focus towards search integration with social, many companies and digital pundits are still skeptical about…
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WSJ.com: Today's Most Popular
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A 'Port' out of the Norm
9 Feb 2012 | 1:28 amWalt Mossberg reviews a special flash drive that can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports. -
ObamaCare's Great Awakening
8 Feb 2012 | 5:46 pmHHS tells religious believers to go to hell. The public notices. -
Robert Reilly: Romney's Businessman Pitch Won't Work
8 Feb 2012 | 9:53 amIf you can't articulate the cause for which you are fighting in moral terms, you will lose. -
Energy Boom Lifts Economy
8 Feb 2012 | 8:50 amThe benefits of the newest energy boom are extending far beyond the traditional oil patch. It's revving up the U.S. economy. -
Duke, North Carolina Top Basketball's Alumni Loot Index
8 Feb 2012 | 8:24 amWhat if you tried to measure the success of every college basketball team by a more practical measure: how much money its alumni have earned by playing the sport professionally?
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Techmeme
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End of an era: Kodak discontinues camera business (Don Reisinger/CNET)
9 Feb 2012 | 8:55 amDon Reisinger / CNET: End of an era: Kodak discontinues camera business — Eastman Kodak has shocked the world today, announcing that it has put an end to its camera business. — By the end of June, Kodak expects to phase out its digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and digital picture frames, the company announced today. -
Alibaba Suspended as Buyback of Yahoo Stake Looms With Loan (Mark Lee/Bloomberg)
9 Feb 2012 | 8:50 amMark Lee / Bloomberg: Alibaba Suspended as Buyback of Yahoo Stake Looms With Loan — Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688) suspended its shares from trading in Hong Kong as the company prepares a statement about a transaction involving its parent, which is raising about $3 billion to buy back stock held by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) -
End of an Era: Google's Very First Employee, Craig Silverstein - Technically, No. 3 - Leaving (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)
9 Feb 2012 | 8:40 amKara Swisher / AllThingsD: End of an Era: Google's Very First Employee, Craig Silverstein — Technically, No. 3 — Leaving — Google's very first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving the company to join the high-profile online learning phenom, Khan Academy. — News of the departure first appeared yesterday … -
Analysis: More than just Great Firewall awaits Facebook in China (Melanie Lee/Reuters)
9 Feb 2012 | 8:25 amMelanie Lee / Reuters: Analysis: More than just Great Firewall awaits Facebook in China — (Reuters) - When it comes to China, Facebook should consider itself forewarned. Cracking the world's biggest internet population might seem an obvious ambition for the social networking giant as it trumpets its global growth … -
Faster Chips And A Retina Display: Apple Will Unveil The Next iPad In The First Week Of March In San Francisco [REPORT] (Uzair Ghani/Redmond Pie)
9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amUzair Ghani / Redmond Pie: Faster Chips And A Retina Display: Apple Will Unveil The Next iPad In The First Week Of March In San Francisco [REPORT] — Apple usually announces a new iPad every Feb-March and we are once again in that period of time when all sorts of “inside sources” say that they've got a solid month/day for when the next iPad will release.
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WSJ.com: Opinion
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No Budget, No Problem
9 Feb 2012 | 7:48 amNow the White House tells Senate Democrats to flout the law. -
Rove: Newt's Southern Strategy Won't Work
9 Feb 2012 | 7:28 amSantorum's Tuesday wins make him, for now at least, Romney's main conservative challenger. -
Henninger: Transformers
9 Feb 2012 | 6:51 amThe Catholic church learns the true meaning of Obama's 'transformative' presidency. -
Andrew Roberts: How the Queen Saved and Soothed Britain
8 Feb 2012 | 9:44 pmIn her Diamond Jubilee year, Elizabeth II deserves praise for having been, in the words of historian John Grigg, 'a bastion of stability in an age of social and moral flux.' -
John Cochrane: The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate
8 Feb 2012 | 8:17 pmCritics are missing the main point. There are good reasons that your car-insurance company doesn't add $100 to your premium and then cover oil changes.
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USATODAY.com Feed
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Editorial: Romney's budget numbers won't balance
8 Feb 2012 | 5:38 pmMassive and immediate tax cuts plus smaller spending cuts would increase the deficit over the next decade, not cut it. -
Mitt Romney: We don't need higher taxes
8 Feb 2012 | 5:34 pmIf we can restore our government to its pre-Obama size, existing tax revenues are roughly capable of funding it. -
Editorial: California same-sex marriage ruling tied in knots
8 Feb 2012 | 5:21 pmSo how might this problem be justly untangled without infringing anyone's constitutional rights? -
Other views: Ruling poses threat to marriage
8 Feb 2012 | 5:18 pmA roundup of opinion online about same-sex marriage in California. -
Letters: Support for charity tainted by partisan politics
8 Feb 2012 | 4:53 pmThat's too bad because both Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood have done a lot of good for women's health.
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Washington Post Editorials: Latest Editorial and Editorial Archive
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Editorial Board: Proposition 8 ruling was just but wobbly
8 Feb 2012 | 5:01 pmIS IT UNCONSTITUTIONAL to forbid same-sex couples from calling their unions a “marriage” if — as is the case in California — they enjoy the same legal rights and responsibilities as opposite-sex partners in the state? Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: The House should take the opportunity to help crack down on public corruption
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmTHE HOUSE of Representatives is expected to take up Thursday a useful measure to prohibit insider trading by members of Congress and to beef up disclosure of lawmakers’ financial transactions. Unfortunately, the version of the measure produced by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) omits one of the most important parts of the bill passed by the Senate: a provision that would restore prosecutors’ ability to go after official corruption. Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: Metro will look into Jim Graham’s actions, at last
7 Feb 2012 | 4:25 pmTHE CHAIR OF the Metro board of directors announced Tuesday the launch of an independent review into the handling of an unsuccessful development venture on Florida Avenue NW, about which we have written several recent editorials. It is a welcome move but late. We point that out not to be churlish but because the failure to investigate sooner raises questions about District and Metro processes. Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: The U.S. must do more for Guatemala over STD study
7 Feb 2012 | 4:24 pmIN THE FALL of 2010, the Obama administration acknowledged a shocking truth: From 1946 through 1948, officials working in Guatemala for the U.S. Public Health Service conducted tests on some 5,100 unwitting individuals and deliberately infected at least 1,300 with sexually transmitted diseases. None of the victims — who included prisoners, soldiers, the mentally ill and commercial sex workers — consented to this barbaric treatment. At least 83 people died, and many suffered permanent damage. Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: U.S. must bring pressure to bear on Bahrain
6 Feb 2012 | 4:45 pmTHE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION and other Western governments have rightly lambasted Russia and China for blocking action by the U.N. Security Council on Syria. The government of Vladimir Putin is particularly culpable for propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad: In addition to vetoing a Security Council resolution, it has been supplying Damascus with weapons. In contrast, though it suffered a diplomatic defeat, the United States will ultimately reap the benefit of siding with the Syrian people. As President Obama said in a searing statement Saturday, by rejecting the regime and its criminal…
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Church of the Customer Blog
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Playbooks and visual explanations
6 Feb 2012 | 8:30 amBy the time the New York Giants and the New England Patriots took the field Sunday for their Super Bowl matchup, the players on both teams had read, re-read and rehearsed their respective game playbooks dozens, if not hundreds of times. They'd studied each play via multiple diagrams and photographs, stats and descriptions of assignments for every player on the field. A playbook is an apt metaphor for any business team that needs concise, how-to plans to deal with the complexity of systems, processes and moving variables, especially with social business. Whether it's for one of the world's… -
People trust people
1 Feb 2012 | 12:27 pm[Click on chart to see larger version.] The latest edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer study just came out showing CEO's in the dog house when it comes to being trusted. Who do people trust? Academic and tech experts, sure. But the biggest movers in the study are "a person just like me" and "regular employee." Look at your 2012 marketing plan. Are you providing ways for your customers to get together in-person and online to encourage word of mouth? Are you showcasing your best employees in social media, at conferences, and at private events with customers? Source: 2012 Edelman… -
FedEx's apology: expertly delivered
21 Dec 2011 | 8:29 pmWe've seen this before: 1) company makes an egregious service mistake and is outed by a customer via a YouTube video, 2) video goes viral, 3) mainstream media picks up the story and amplifies it, 4) PR nightmare begins. This week's culprit is FedEx. A California FedEx driver is caught on a security-camera video flinging a package containing a computer monitor over the fence of a gated Southern California house. At no time does the driver attempt to ring the bell for delivery. Just a toss over the fence, and he jumps back into his truck. In two days, the video has over three million views. … -
The simplest definition of word of mouth marketing
28 Nov 2011 | 12:38 pmNice video from WOMMA on the basics of word of mouth marketing. Tweet -
14 new statistics about word of mouth marketing
17 Oct 2011 | 11:45 amThe Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has a neat infographic detailing the latest stats about word or mouth marketing, online and offline. Source: WOMMA Note: the WOMMA Summit is coming up November 16-18 in Las Vegas. It's a great conference to learn the latest WOM marketing techniques from leading brands and agencies. Tweet
