2011 February | Social Media Explorer

The Unspoken Evil Of The RFP

by Jason Falls · February 28, 2011

The RFP must die.

Or at least the way the process has evolved in today’s marketing world should. On the surface, it seems innocuous. A company or organization issues an request for proposal (sometimes masked as a ‘request for quote’) to several agencies, consultants for firms. They sometimes include ridiculous assignments jammed into even more ridiculous time frames and even sometimes have the audacity for the responder to commence work on creative concepts and ideas that solve the prospective client’s communications problem.

Then the company collects the RFPs, steals the ideas and doesn’t even change the account from the agency they were working with.

48 comments

Twitter, Time Shifting, Technology & Television

by Adam Helweh · February 25, 2011

Are you a “Time Shifter”? No, I am not asking you if you have the ability to slip in and out of the time space continuum at will. I am asking if you are among the millions of people who record your favorite television shows via Tivo or some other DVR device so you can watch them when it’s convenient for you?

An article posted by the AP back in August states, “Sixty-two percent of viewers across the country interviewed in a poll conducted for the nation’s largest cable company, Comcast Corp., said they have used time-shifting technology. Six in 10 people said they owned a digital video recorder.”

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The Executive’s Guide To Enterprise Social Media Strategy: Review

by Tom Webster · February 24, 2011

Statistically speaking, most of you probably work for someone else. At some point, if you are the social media evangelist for your team, unit or company, you will have been asked this question: so, what’s this all about? Do we need to have a Twankerbook account? Answering the “should we” question is probably easy for active users of social platforms (if not, see below.) If your entreaties are successful, you’ll be rewarded with this question: “OK, I’m in. What are our next steps?”

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The Myth Of Blogging Buddies

by Jason Falls · February 23, 2011

Just exactly how much impact do various channels of social media have on your blog? Or even your corporate website? While your traction may vary and some precipitating factors probably skew my results here at Social Media Explorer, I thought my traffic referrals might make for interesting conversation.

Since Social Media Explorer launched in September 2007, almost one million unique visitors have been here. More specifically, as of end-of-day Saturday, there have been 942,021 unique visitors to SME according to Google Analytics. Of those, 35.6 percent are from organic search results. Think about that! Over one-third of my visits have been from people searching for something and finding a potential answer on SME. That’s pretty strong considering this is a blog, has never had a formal SEO strategy, nor has it ever had any back-end SEO work other than my little piddling with URL structures a month or so ago.

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Who Are The Experts?

by Jason Falls · February 21, 2011

Sitting in on the Marketing Technology Show Friday with Doug Karr and the folks at The Marketing Technology Blog, my friend Erik Deckers offered up a discussion question around the subject of “experts.” An off-shoot of the social media douchebags discussion, which I loathe (and said as much about several years ago), but one that is certainly worth having from time to time.

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6 Ways to Prep for Advertising Online

by Jason Falls · February 19, 2011

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Cam Lay, Director of Marketing for Yodle, a leading provider of local online advertising.

Before you can establish an online advertising plan for your local business, you need a few key marketing basics in place. After you have that, you’ll know that you know what you need to know (follow that?), and your plan will be grounded firmly in reality and primed for success. Although most of these basics hold true for traditional media advertising, the beauty of online advertising is that you can test it quickly and affordably —and make adjustments to your mix or your message in almost real time. Here are the six building-block tasks that any serious marketer has to tackle:

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Spring Book Reviews: Four For Your List

by Jason Falls · February 18, 2011

It’s that time again. When the stack of books I’ve been asked to review gets so high, I feel bad about not taking a few off the top. So I’ve put together another video review of four books I think are worth your time and effort for this spring. Each has some application to the social media marketing and online communications world.