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
social media strategy 9  |  Add Yours

How to Know if You’re Spread Too Thin in Social Media

Amazing how far the pendulum has swung for corporate social media. In just three years, we’ve moved from skepticism and suspicion of social media as an activity worthy of support, to the present scenario with rampant social participation proliferation. The most endangered word in social media today is “no” as social media managers and governance [...]

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social media strategy 8  |  Add Yours

How Penn and Teller Turn the Audience Into Social Megaphones

One of the biggest mistakes brands are making in social is overemphasizing their owned media and underemphasizing their earned media. Companies are spending time and riches to acquire a larger audience so that they can talk at more people, while simultaneously ignoring the simple truth that those people aren’t just message receptacles, but also megaphones [...]

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social media strategy 15  |  Add Yours

Are You a Marketing Cheater? The Continued Gamification of Attention

We are addicted to shortcuts. Regardless of the structure and rules of the contest at hand, some among us will stretch the boundaries seeking an edge over our opponent. Perhaps this is just human nature, or maybe it’s more prevalent in America where we cherish our opportunity to have a strong role in our personal [...]

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Social Media Research 9  |  Add Yours

Are Brands Overvaluing Facebook and Twitter? Let’s Find Out

As I announced recently, I’m partnering with global market analysis firm Edison Research on The Social Habit, a comprehensive, quarterly study of how Americans use social media, why, and to what end. Edison (who is the exclusive provider of exit polling data for Presidential elections, among other things) is handling the research, and is using [...]

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Power Of 12  |  Add Yours

The Power of a Question

When I was 30, I lived in a largely rent-controlled building in New York City with my (then) girlfriend, who was also my age. There were nine other residents on our floor: a young couple in their 20’s, and seven single elderly widows/widowers in their 70’s and 80’s. The average age of our floor was [...]

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The Social Habit 46  |  Add Yours

11 Shocking New Social Media Statistics in America

You think social media is reaching maturity, and the whipsaw behavioral shifts that change like a Dwight Howard trade request are things of the past? Uhhh, no. Released yesterday at Blogworld New York, findings from social media behavioral researcher Tom Webster and the team at Edison Research show some shocking changes in how Americans use and [...]

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Social Pros Podcast 2  |  Add Yours

Social Pros 13 – Ryon Harms, Farmers Insurance

This is Episode 13 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Ryon Harms, the head of social media for Farmers Insurance. Read on for insights from Ryon, and our Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: 44% of Americans see tweets mentioned nearly every day, [...]

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social media case studies 29  |  Add Yours

Our Dangerous Addiction to Social Media Case Studies

The two most important words in social media should be “so what?” As Tom Webster eloquently put it in his recent Blogworld keynote, when research wears the cloak of content marketing, it’s a recipe for the incurious to pull a fast one on the masses, disguising pointless data as gospel. Tom was referring to data-dredging [...]

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mobile 38  |  Add Yours

Social Media Success is About the Wizard, Not the Wand

Thoughtful research genius Tom Webster wrote an interesting post a couple weeks ago about where the location-based business could head, moving beyond the momentary check-in toward more nuanced and relevant customer interactions, using location data as the raw materials. His example was his local watering hole, where he figures by the time he’s checked in [...]

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facebook 38  |  Add Yours

The Real Reason Your Customers Don’t Like You on Facebook

In addition to the controversial redesign of the news feed, and announcements from the f8 conference about the new Timeline profile and app-fueled Graph Rank, was another very interesting Facebook-related development last week. My friends (and client) ExactTarget released part 10 of their social media research series. This one is called “The Meaning of Like” [...]

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