Humanizing a Critically Important Industry, From the Ground Up

KNow a California Farmer

The public dialog about agriculture in California and beyond is largely negative, with tales of agribusiness nefariousness commonplace. This is despite the fact that 98% of America’s farms are still owned by families. Farmers are literally feeding us every day, but are routinely pilloried in social media and elsewhere by a very vocal minority. This […]

Is It Time for The NOW Revolution?

At long last, I’m delighted to announce that The NOW Revolution is complete and available for pre-order. My new book, written with my uber-talented co-author Amber Naslund, is subtitled “7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social“. (big thanks to many of you for helping us pick a title a few months […]

How Size Matters in the Social Media ROI Debate

Guest post by Simon Gornick, a content consultant specializing in short form slogans, and owner of The Tagline Machine. ROI in social media is a luxury. And the only brands that can accept that are likely to be big ones with multi-platform marketing budgets. The larger the brand, the more likely they are to use […]

Is Facebook Suffocating the Rest of Social Media?

Forrester Research recently released a 2010 update to its Social Technographics® data that analyzes the social behaviors of global Internet users. For the first time, the percentage of U.S. consumers engaged in certain social behaviors actually went down, not up. Is the bloom off the rose? Is this the long-promised social media backlash? Overall, social media […]

Is Content Marketing a Necessity For Your Brand?

Content Marketing – Give Them Something to Talk About If customers and prospects are already chattering about your brand on the social Web, your social media initiative can focus primarily on becoming an authentic part of those existing conversations. If someone throws you a surprise party, you just need to show up – you don’t […]

6 Timely Tips for Twitter Success

New research from Sysomos shows that 92.4% of all retweets happen within the first hour after the tweet has been sent. This demonstrates that Twitter users are not browsing the public stream (or even their own lists) to find and interact with tweets from earlier in the day. Consequently, WHEN you send your tweets has […]

Is Our Addiction to ROI Killing Social Media?

Social Media ROI Addiction

Guest post by Matt Ridings, founder of MSR Consulting, a Digital Relationship Marketing Agency in St. Louis. He’s @techguerilla on Twitter. I had an interesting phone call with a prospective client. I didn’t know him, and hadn’t worked with his (large) company. He was looking for a social media vendor, and was referred to me […]

Travel, Tweets, Trends – Social Media Runs Rampant in Adventure Travel

travel social media

There’s been a lot of talk (and rightfully so) lately about industries where social media adoption is as slow as a Brett Favre farewell. Financial services. Utilities. Pharma. And a lot more. I’ll write more about those issues soon, but today let’s turn our attention to an industry where social media is thriving like Cher’s […]

microMARKETING Requires Bayonets, Not Grenades

microMARKETING

As an experienced marketer who has worked with dozens of big companies in his agency career (he’s currently a VP at Powered), Greg Verdino has had a ringside seat for the evolution of communication. He successfully documents that evolution in his new book microMARKETING: Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small. Written with a […]

Why Social Supports Email in the Interactive Marketing Hub

why social supports email in the interactive marketing hub

A big distinction between email marketing and social media marketing is the difference between actual audience and potential audience. Email is all about actual audience. If someone signs up for your email updates when you send one out, that person will receive it in almost every case. Will that open it? Approximately 25% of the […]

Content Lessons Learned From 25 Popular Blog Posts

Content Lessons Learned From 25 Blog Posts

I’ve been writing Convince & Convert for more than two years, and have produced more than 300 posts. Mostly from me, with some terrific assistance from talented guest authors. Last week, I was on a content marketing discussion panel (moderated by Jeff Rohrs) at the ExactTarget Connections conference. I was joined by Joe Pulizzi from […]

Why Are Companies Not Valuing Judgment As A Critical Element

Guest post by Noemi Pollack, CEO & Founder of The Pollack PR Marketing Group, a 25-year old integrated PR and marketing agency in Century City, CA. Inevitably, when corporate America seeks a PR agency to support their communications effort, the Request for Proposals (RFP) asks for critical capabilities that can help a company sift through […]

5 Step Process for Social Media Success

social media success process

Social media makes big companies feel small again, and gives small companies a natural advantage because they are closer to their customers. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you have interesting stories to tell. Finding and sharing them is the first step toward social media success. What is your process for harvesting stories within […]

Why Social CRM Needs to Be Less About the Social and More About the Customers

Social CRM

Today’s guest post is by Kevin Troy Darling, Social Media Program Manager at iLinc Web Conferencing, who has been writing all his life, but only marketing pays. To paraphrase Tina Turner, we don’t need another acronym. The debate on Social CRM (sCRM) could easily become a distraction. We have many good tools at our disposal […]

6 Lessons Learned From the Demise of MySpace

Once the undisputed king of social media (at least in the U.S.), MySpace last week declared what amounts to a post-modern armistice, announcing that they will integrate status updates with Facebook (and Twitter). MySpace used to be Janet, and now it’s LaToya – at best. While the erosion of the MySpace user base has been […]

UNcanny Insights From UnMarketing

The new book UnMarketing from Canadian viral marketer and Twitter gadfly Scott Stratten takes the rules and purees them, Blendtec style. Here’s what makes UnMarketing an unusual, yet worthy use of your marketing education time: UNpretentious Unlike so many marketing books, Stratten doesn’t overcomplicate the subject matter. He believes that common sense should prevail, and […]