From the monthly archives:

December 2009

Most Shared Content Of 2009

by Jason Falls · December 31, 2009

Image representing AddThis as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

My friends at AddThis sent me the list of the most shared content of 2009 according to the 600 million monthly people who view their share widget. I thought it was an interesting list and worth sharing.

Keep in mind this is online users who choose to share content by clicking on a widget embedded on the site or post as opposed to copy-pasting the link or using other share bookmarklets or plugins. I don’t think it really skews the data too much, though, because I believe those outside the social media bubble probably use the share widgets like AddThis more than those of us with other mechanisms to do so. This is what was popular for the world. What was popular to the social media bubble doesn’t matter much.

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13 comments

How To Add Surprise To Your Marketing

by Jason Falls · December 30, 2009

It seems every time someone told Andy Nulman he was nuts, he would surprise them. Not surprisingly, his first book is subtitled, “Profiting from the Power of Surprise.” The book is called Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise
and discusses how surprise marketing can often lift companies, products and brands to levels of buzz and talk-worthiness that are the envy of the industry. And Andy should know. He’s been capitalizing on surprises for a while now. I caught up with him at Word of Mouth Supergenius a few weeks ago for an episode of Social Media Explorer TV.

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7 comments

What Social Media Can Do For Your Business

by Jason Falls · December 28, 2009

There are still a number of business people, executives, owners and more, that have doubts about social media as a business driver. Part of that skepticism has to do with the fact the medium is quite new and participating in it requires a different approach from traditional marketing efforts. Part of it has to do with the fact that social media thinkers and advocates have never been very good at illustrating a definitive tie to business success through their medium of choice.

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58 comments

May Your Christmas Be Merry

by Jason Falls · December 25, 2009

My hope is you don’t see this blog post until well after Friday. My intention today, and this weekend, is to unplug and enjoy family and friends.

But I did want to take a moment to wish everyone a very merry season, whatever holiday you celebrate, or even if you don’t celebrate anything other than another Friday. The past year has been an unbelievable ride for me and for Social Media Explorer. And having each of you take the time to spend a bit of your week with me here is a lot of the reason for that.

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13 comments

How To Drive Business Leads With Question & Answer Forums

by Jason Falls · December 23, 2009

My mother used to tell me the only stupid question was the one you didn’t ask. Thanks to social media, in business terms, the only stupid question is fast becoming the one you don’t answer.

People are driving leads using Question and Answer forums like LinkedIn Answers, Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com. While most case study examples seem to be independent consultants, someone has finally put some quantification around the trend with some surprising results.

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65 comments

More On The Science of Sharing From ShareThis

by Jason Falls · December 21, 2009

ShareThis, the sharing widget of choice for many bloggers, including me, released some information last week that confirms the Tell-A-Friend data we discussed last month. Email is still the sharing mechanism of choice for most web users. In fact, ShareThis’s numbers almost match those from Tell-A-Friend across the board, so we can reasonably conclude the numbers aren’t that affected by the type of tool used.

Tell-A-Friend told us their analysis showed that people shared web content in the following breakdown: Email – 59%; Instant Messenger – 25%; Social Networking – 14% (broken down to 79% of that via Facebook or 11% of the total, 15% via MySpace and just 5% via Twitter).

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30 comments

Four Business Books Worth Holiday Gifting

by Jason Falls · December 18, 2009

The holiday season is upon us and some last minute shopping has to be done. I thought I might offer up some book reviews as recommendations for you this week so you can hop on Amazon (affiliate links provided) and check off another couple folks from your lists. (And thought it’s a comfy sweatshirt, I am not a University of Georgia graduate. It was red and festive.)

Holiday Book Recommendations From Social Media Explorer from Jason Falls on Vimeo.

A quick recap with links:

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17 comments

Exploring Corporate Blogging: A Call To Action

by Jason Falls · December 17, 2009

Some friends of mine and I are diving into a research project around corporate blogging and need your help. All you have to do is fill out a 2-3 minute survey about your corporate blog. Check out the survey here. Be forewarned: You’ll need to have your web analytics handy for the survey. We’re trying to understand some important trends and user behaviors on corporate blogs. If you have more than one corporate blog and don’t mind, please take the survey once for each blog. And tell your friends. The more participants we have, the better the information will be.

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8 comments

Selling Your Product By Selling Someone Else’s

by Jason Falls · December 16, 2009

For years now you’ve heard advice from social media evangelists that is counter-intuitive to a traditional marketing approach. Don’t sell first. Relinquish control of your brand to your customers. Take your content to the customers instead of driving all activity to your own website. Build content around your customers, not your brand.

On Monday, we looked at an example of a business that relinquished control to empower their audience of enthusiasts. Today, we’ll look at an example of a business building content around their consumer’s need, not the company’s profits.

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