Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy?

I have been the champion of my fantasy football league two of the past four years, and while I’ve had a rough start to this season, I’m still the defending champion. And while I appreciate the winner’s check, having the trophy on my desk for a year is much, much sweeter. Trophies are important. They […]

Imitation and Obsolescence – Facebook Guns for Twitter

Join me and 21 other speakers for Facebook Success Summit 2010, a Webinar series with everything you need to know about Facebook for business. Sessions start October 5. Go to http://bit.ly/facebooksuccess to save 50% for a limited time. Revenge is a dish best served via status updates. When you look in the rearview mirror, you […]

Incinerate Your Social Media Checklist

Yes, there are holdouts, but social media adoption is as fast as anything I’ve ever seen. It took at least 7 years for companies to stop asking “why do we need a Web site?” We’ll have nearly universal social media usage at a corporate level long before then. If you believe Forrester’s predictions on interactive […]

11 Timely Social Media Takeaways

Thanks very much for your support of Convince & Convert while I was on vacation in Denmark and Norway. I really appreciate the readership, tweets, and comments about the fantastic guest posts that ran during my absence. Great job by the excellent team of guest bloggers. It just goes to show, Convince & Convert isn’t […]

Can Social Media and Lead Generation Coalesce?

social-media-lead-generatio

By now, we all know that social media is a fantastic tool for gauging the audience and communicating with previous and current customers. But, can it also be used to lure in new customers? Can social media marketing be paired with other lead generation tactics to create new business opportunities? My initial response was, ”mmh, […]

Just Being There Isn’t Enough

social media being there

Guest post by Adam Pierno (@apierno). Adam is Creative Director at Santy Integrated, working with diverse clients like Phoenix Children’s Hospital and The Counter across all media. He splits his time between Art Direction and figuring out what makes people tick. You’ve put your brand on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Congratulations. You’re part […]

Can Spam Survive in a Social Media World?

social media spam

Guest post by Indra Gardiner (@bgindra), President of Bailey Gardiner in San Diego. An award-winning PR and marketing pro, she leads BG’s social media efforts and writes on their Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid Blog. There’s always someone who wants to ruin it for everyone else. Know what I mean? And in the world of social […]

Is Social Media Now Anti-Social?

Guest post by Andrew Freeman (@andrewfreeman), an online Campaign Manager and Media Planner for Sitewire, where he is also a regular blog contributor. Andrew loves marketing, psychology and all things digital, his musings can be read at www.strategicality.com. I am going to go out on a limb and say that I think social media is […]

May I Contact You Please? The Evolution of Permission

Guest post by Doug Wick (@dougwick), who thinks a lot about marketing and is a Director of Business Development for Powered, a social marketing company in Austin, TX. He writes frequently for Powered’s blog, The Engaged Consumer, and at DougWick.com. In the past decade of direct marketing online, the focal point has become contacting consumers […]

Let’s Stop Swooning Over Social Media

Are you overdoing it on social media? Just a little? I’m a proponent of social media. In fact, I’m a proponent that gets paid to convince others that social media is valuable. But, like in the early days of Web design, SEO, PPC, email, and banners before it, there’s too much swooning and not enough […]

Delegation Equals Death in Social Media

flickr-photo-download_-erin-the-cheerleader-from-barrhead

Are you just a social media cheerleader? Almost every time I work with a public relations firm or corporation on social media, I hear a version of this statement: “Us old dogs don’t really understand all this new social media stuff, but we’ve got this brilliant young guy right out of school, and he’s getting […]

Observations on Day 365

This week makes it one year since I started writing this blog, and I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thanks to every one of you that occupies even a minute of their increasingly precious time by reading Convince & Convert. The volume of high quality, free, online content (especially about marketing) […]

CC Chapman – The Twitter 20 Interview on Telling Stories and Humanizing Brands

CC Chapman is a lot of desirable things. A legendary podcaster that embraced that medium from its very earliest days. A grizzled blogger, with entries dating back to 2001. A co-founder of the buzzlicious non-traditional marketing agency The Advance Guard. A devoted father that doesn’t let the digital tsunami swamp his boat. Between conference speaking […]

Amber Naslund – The Twitter 20 Interview on Making Friends and Listening to People

A woman happily laughing

Amber Naslund is like the post-modern, social media version of that girl in high school that everyone loved. The geeks. the stoners. The jocks. The auto-shop dudes. The home economics apron-wearers. The goths. The teachers. Social media is about people and connections, and like Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk, Amber’s passion for people shines through […]

3 Key Twitter Changes Lost in the Hysteria

As it grows up, is Twitter taking the fun out of it? Lost in the hysteria over changes to Twitter’s reply handling scheme are several other adjustments that were more quietly unveiled/discussed in recent days that are likely to prove much more important. 1. Follower Notices in HTML Notifications that you have been followed by […]

David Armano – The Twitter 20 Interview on Visual Thinking and Social Business

David Armano may very well be the best writer of any graphic designer in America. He writes about social business, visual communication, and micro-interactions on his own blog, and for AdAge and BusinessWeek. (He also makes insanely great presentations). David has worked with some of the world’s largest brands, creating successful online experiences that make […]