Let's step outside of the echo chamber for a minute. Does social media marketing matter? What I want to know is, how does this stuff impact the bottom line? As a consumer (and apologies, biased towards the US - with our weak currency, these examples carry less efficacy when everything looks like it's discounted 30 - 50%), I'm curious to know if you have ever done any of the following. (Partial credit on examples to Mashable and Jeremiah.) Add up...

Today, business people have to turn the old rules inside out, upside down, and backwards not only to succeed, but to survive!

The rules of business are changing, the new rules are unconventional. The social web removes all barriers to entry, provides technological mediums at a fraction of historical cost, enables people to work from anywhere at anytime and connects everyone to everything globally, including your customers.

The real sources...

A little while ago I wrote about how you can get your site/blog indexed in Google in a short period of time.  However, getting your site indexed is not going to drive traffic to your blog (or your website for that matter).  Driving traffic obviously takes time and patience.  So what can you do to [...]

You know I’m a fan of the Dave Matthews Band. Devastating news for the band and it’s fans today is that founding member and saxophonist LeRoi Moore died yesterday afternoon, August 19, due to complications resulting from a serious motorcar accident near his Charlottesville ranch at the end of June. From the band’s website:

We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesd...

In our “100 Days of Social Media” post, several readers wanted to know a few top reasons our site was pulling in an audience. The most basic reason: we cast a very wide net. Sites are made up of many pages beside the homepage and in the social media world, a site becomes more defined [...]

Is Twitter moving beyond being a news story and towards becoming a credible source for them? Not too long ago I got excited whenever I saw Twitter mentioned as the subject of a news article. Recently, though, I’ve noticed an increasing number of mainstream news articles using Twitter as a source rather than a subject. The [...]

I've been thinking lately about what I call the social media ego trap. In a nutshell, social technologies use game mechanics to get users hooked on participation. People often get addicted to ego-stroking system feedback, until they can temper their usage (addiction?) in terms of utility vs. serendipity. But what if you've got something to sell? What if you want to set an "ego trap" yourself? Let me show you a few traps that have already been sp...

Did you know that 37 members of Social Media Today have gotten great new jobs because they filled out their profile pages here?  No?   Well, actually we don't know that either.  But we do know that several folks who blog and comment on these pages have gotten some really nice gigs because they are active here.  If you were looking for a social media expert would you go to LinkedIn or would you search through our People section?  If you haven't d...

I’ve been travelling around the country this weekend, visiting relatives, and as I browsed the magazines at Nottingham station on my way back to London today I noticed something strange. A magazine devoted entirely to Facebook. With a few minutes to spare before my train, I picked up the magazine. It offers a “complete guide to social networking” and includes things like a step-by-step guide of setting up a profile and famous Facebookers.

I ...