YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com

A Hammer Isn’t a House – Don’t Confuse Tools with Metrics

Last week I spoke about The NOW Revolution at a dinner for 50 or so social media and email marketers, all employed by major corporations based in NYC. It was a great time. Steaks were eaten. Wine drank. Books signed. Interesting conversation participated in. What struck me most, however, was a chat I had with [...]

Continue Reading

Spy on Your Facebook Competitors with HyperAlerts

The great thing about companies widely publishing APIs in this age of collaboration is that crafty third-parties can develop tools and features that the developers of the “mother ship” forgot. Browse through Laura Fitton’s amazing One Forty (the app store Twitter neglected to build) and you’ll find thousands of Twitter add-ons. But now that Twitter [...]

Continue Reading

7 Ways to Thank Someone for a Retweet

Guest post from Angie Schottmuller, an interactive Jedi, e-commerce expert, and multi-channel strategist at Interactive Artisan. If you’re an active Twitter user, you’ve likely seen a “Thanks for the RT!” post at some point. You’ve possibly even posted them yourself. So is a “retweet thank you” polite Twitter etiquette, or is it an over indulgence [...]

Continue Reading

6 Newfangled Social Media Tools Worth Discovering

I’m not really sure how all of these guys are going to make a living, but there sure as hell is no shortage of innovation in social media. The torrent of new digital tools and gadgets makes Sharper Image, SkyMall, and Hammacher Schlemmer look like an Amish electronics store. Just in OneForty alone (the unofficial [...]

Continue Reading

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 [...]

Continue Reading

3 Reasons Email is the Coolest Vampire Today

Guest post by Jeff Rohrs, who heads up the Marketing Research & Education Team at ExactTarget. A driving force behind the company’s SUBSCRIBERS RULE! philosophy, Jeff is also co-author of the ExactTarget/CoTweet SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS Research Series. He lives in Cleveland and has not, to his knowledge, ever been bitten by a vampire—although he [...]

Continue Reading

Social Media Monitoring Tools – How to Pick The Right One

Guest post by Katie Van Domelen, the social media manager at Off Madison Ave in Tempe, Arizona. She specializes in social media strategies that lead to actionable plans to achieve real world objectives. I’ve spent a lot of time working with various social media monitoring tools and I’ve whittled my list of favorites down to [...]

Continue Reading

Why You Should Use a Content Rationale Report

Little is the new big. On today’s Web, buying decisions are influenced less by the grand, sweeping programs that take old marketing and put a fresh coat of social paint on them. On today’s Web, buying decisions are influenced more by specific, hyper-relevant pieces of content that your brand creates to get in front of [...]

Continue Reading

4 Detective Tricks to Find Your Customers in Social Media

For many companies, the conversation has shifted from “why” or “should” we do social media, to “where” and “how” social media should be done. A major component of answering those questions effectively is understanding in which social outposts your customers are concentrated. Because there really is no benefit in beating your customers to the punch. [...]

Continue Reading

The More Things Change, The More Things Change

Social media hates the status quo the way Kobe hates Shaq. The way Donovan McNabb hates T.O. The way Lindsey Lohan hates non-alcoholic beverages. Just when you think you have some modicum of a handle on this industry, new developments come along and shake up your head like a snow globe. The good news is [...]

Continue Reading