3 Most Common Brand Social Media Species

After observing many brand profiles in the social media ecosystem over the past few years, my research on these unique creatures has resulted in the discovery of three distinct species. In this article, I present my findings and welcome all peer reviews. Here are the three most common brand socia...

By Tatiana Aders • Aug. 7, 2013

3 Reasons That Blogging Isn't Dead

Every few days there seems to be a new critic saying that blogging is dead. Many of these critics say that social media networks have taken over diminishing the popularity of the blog. Yes, there's no denying the fact that social media is wildly popular and offers a quick and easy way to share id...

By Stephanie Frasco • Aug. 7, 2013

How to Use Social Media for Your Political Campaign

It's time again to begin thinking about and planning for the 2014 round of elections. This means TV ads, debates, public appearances, pictures of politicians holding children - all part of a typical political campaign. The savvy, modern politician also knows that their social media strategy is cr...

By Anqi Cong • Aug. 7, 2013

Media Relations: How to Do it On Your Own

Yesterday I was strolling through Twitter when I saw a tweet from my new friend Rebekah Iliff that said, "Dear @Inc: You do a GRAVE disservice here" and it linked to a story called, "How to Do Your Own PR."I'm a big proponent of helping small business owners figure out how to do some of this them...

By Gini Dietrich • Aug. 7, 2013

Understanding Content Curation and How It Applies to Social Media

Imagine this. You're the editor of a newspaper.... but you work on an island in the middle of the South Pacific. No internet access to help with research. No team of reporters. Not even a phone, smart or otherwise.Just a naked desk, stuck in the middle of an empty beach.Forget about what happens ...

By Carrie Morgan • Aug. 7, 2013

How to Adjust the New Gmail Tabs to Get Priority Email

Google has made some big changes recently to the Gmail user interface!If you use Gmail, you likely noticed the new "multi tab" structure across the top. Gmail is making it's own determination on what mail goes in each category for you! This means some important newsletters (like from Pam ) may ...

By Pam Moore • Aug. 7, 2013

Klout: The Online Standard of Vanity?

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the weight of Klout scores. With the gospel of influencer marketing pollinating the media, it's hard not to. Like stocks and credit scores, it's easy to get caught up in the rise and fall of where you stand in relation to others. But is there more to it tha...

By Brenda Somich • Aug. 7, 2013

Why You Need to Join Google+

It's been two years since search giant Google debuted their social networking concept called Google+. Many thought it was going to be like Google Buzz or like Orkut, both of which went silently (well, in the case of Orkut) into the night. And recently, Google has been killing off programs left an...

By Amanda Green • Aug. 7, 2013

Google Relaunches the Zagat Experience with Curated Lists

Anytime there is a Google relaunch it's a good idea to understand what has changed and how that could potentially change your SEO strategy. Just last week on July 29, Google announced that it has relaunched its Zagat rating system and will now offer access to all of the rating information without...

By Amanda DiSilvestro • Aug. 7, 2013

Ikea's 2014 Catalogue: A Perfect Marriage of Traditional Media and Technology

There are a number of inspiring businesses and brands that are pumping out some killer content and using technology in interesting new ways every day.I know that you're probably thinking there's no possible way that an Ikea catalogue could possible be anything close to being considered 'killer co...

By Matthew Peneycad • Aug. 7, 2013

Internet Marketing Statistics You Can't Ignore [INFOGRAPHIC]

In this day and age, traditional forms of advertising are quickly becoming obsolete. In research done by Nielson, Internet advertising has been outgrowing traditional forms like television, radio, magazines, and newspaper. It is projected to take up a quarter of the advertising share by 2015.

By Bernadette Coleman • Aug. 6, 2013

Why EIG Webservers Exploded This Weekend (And What You Need To Know To Be Safe)

Web Hosting Crash And Burn! Wow, Friday was an incredibly eventful day for a lot of people in social media!(Not really how we prefer to spend our Fridays!)The largest conglomerate of mid-range hosting providers, EIG, which owns companies such as HostGator (as of 2012), Bluehost and HostMonster (...

By Kimberly Castleberry • Aug. 6, 2013

10 Dirty Little Secrets Email Lead List Vendors Don't Want You To Know

How many emails soliciting lead lists do you receive on a regular basis? I receive about two to five in my inbox per day. While tempting for some, email lead list services do more harm than good for a brand. For many people, receiving unsolicited email is darn right offensive and intrusive. Unfor...

By Chad Pollitt • Aug. 6, 2013

2013 Email Marketing Calendar [INFOGRAPHIC]

Our friends at ExactTarget have published a great infographic that details dates for every company - especially retailers - to prepare some campaigns for. Consumers love sales... and holiday sales are king! Here's a rundown of the major dates for United States throughout 2013:Labor Day - Septembe...

By Douglas Karr • Aug. 6, 2013

Getting Realistic about Relationship Marketing

Good customer relationships are the cornerstone of long-term corporate success. The quest to build relationships often proves elusive and expensive because what people want is rarely delivered by the companies that serve them. Instead of investing resources in studying behavior and listening to ...

By Debra Ellis • Aug. 6, 2013

10 Tips to Generate More Social Media Traffic

Social media can be an incredible source of traffic. And best of all, it is traffic that you can count on, day after day. However, it also requires lots of constant hard work and usually it can take some time before you can actually see the results.One of the best things about social media is tha...

By Lilach Bullock • Aug. 6, 2013

10 Tips for Better Facebook Status Updates [INFOGRAPHIC]

How do you increase Facebook engagement? Write better status updates.Wording is everything when it comes to Facebook. It's essential to offer concise, easy-to-understand content with clear calls to action. Posting interesting facts, tips, and images and specifically asking your fans to comment o...

By Pam Dyer • Aug. 6, 2013

How to Increase Your Social Media Reach: Tailor Content to Different Platforms

Today, we will discuss an approach to growing your social media reach: make your content platform-specific.I like to think that social media platforms-like the people who use them-have different personalities. Likewise, you need to use different approaches to get information across each platform,...

By Joyce Sun • Aug. 6, 2013

LinkedIn to Introduce Unrestricted Ads API

LinkedIn intends to monetize its social networking site for professionals through the imminent introduction of its advertising API.The company's platform, with more than 238 million members, seems intent to ramp up its efforts in advertising, with eyes set on fellow social networking giants Faceb...

By Aaron Elliott • Aug. 6, 2013

Three Ways That Facebook's Embeddable Posts Will Benefit Brands

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that they are finally allowing posts from the social networking site to be embedded on other websites, much in the same way that Tweets can be embedded. For brands, this gives them yet another opportunity to use the social networking site to deliver a message...

By Will Scott • Aug. 6, 2013

Innovation: The Heart Of The #SocialShakeUp [VIDEO]

"Innovate or die" The phrase, coined by Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group, host of Pivot Conference, and author of What's the Future of Business, evokes a sense of social darwinism. It seems a little foreboding. How can I keep up in a constantly developing digital environment?Here...

By Robin Fray Carey • Aug. 6, 2013

Tips on Choosing Your Next Link Building Company

Many companies find that link building is addicting. It works like a domino effect-you get one taste of it, then you need more and more and more. Your clients might want link building, you realize the possibilities for your link building, and we cannot forget that there are many different ways yo...

By Amanda DiSilvestro • Aug. 5, 2013

What Jaws, Brand Managers and Consumers Have In Common [INFOGRAPHIC]

You know of my love affair (or is it an addiction?) with pop culture. Anytime I can infuse, imbue and inculcate it into any digital marketing, advertising or branding topic, rest assured I will. So listen up brand managers, brand marketers and all those in the digital marketing and all other mark...

By Steve Olenski • Aug. 5, 2013

A Cautionary Tale of Social Media Humor Gone Wrong

An alert Convince & Convert fan sent me a Twitter direct message this week, alerting me to a gaping, self-inflicted social media wound bleeding all over the Facebook page of the Evansville, Indiana airport. The status update in question has been removed, but I grabbed some screen shots befor...

By Jay Baer • Aug. 5, 2013

Web Content: Is Yours a Complete Bore?

A couple of months ago, Joe Pulizzi published an epic post, "Why Education is a Powerful Content Marketing Strategy: 17 Examples." Required reading in my book, er, feed.The lengthy show and tell style post featured a long roster of real-world examples of brands delivering on the promise of conten...

By Barry Feldman • Aug. 5, 2013