Jason Falls

The Business of Writing Books

by Jason Falls · May 9, 2012

A number of my friends either are, or plan to soon be, writing their first books. I’m really excited for them. I was in their shoes a year ago, plowing through writes, rewrites and edits, putting thoughts on paper and hoping someone out there would think the topic was interesting enough to plop down $24 for a book about it.

All of the folks I’m referring to, in addition to several others, have asked me if writing a book is worth it. While there are few thrills for someone who classifies themselves as a writer more pleasing than seeing your name on a real, hard-bound piece of literature on the shelves of a real bookstore, I thought it appropriate to share a few thoughts with you on the value of writing a book.

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Spruce Up Your Social With Spredfast’s Webinar Series

by Jason Falls · May 8, 2012

Next Tuesday I’ll help Spredfast kick off a neat webinar series that is focused on helping you “Spruce up your Social This Spring.” The social media management solution provider has gathered myself, Michael Brito, Jeremiah Owyang, Kristen Sussman of Social Distillery, Amy Kalm from Intuit and Tom Carusona of Aramark, along with Spredfast’s awesome team of social strategists and marketers to help you learn more about three key topics over the course of the next five weeks.

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Brands Focusing Solely On Facebook Are Destined To Lose

by Jason Falls · May 7, 2012

Brands shifting all or most of their digital marketing and social media marketing efforts to Facebook are going to lose and perhaps big. Yes, there are 900 million users there. Yes, the IPO is coming and an influx of cash and becoming a publicly traded company will bring with it many benefits that will strengthen what Facebook is. Yes, Facebook will continue to be an ever-present social utility for years to come.

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An Awesome Way To Not Just Learn, But Do

by Jason Falls · May 4, 2012

John Jantsch is flat brilliant. This time, he’s developed a webinar series that solves a major problem we all have with learning new ideas in the marketing world. He’s developed a webinar series that forces you to commit to act on what you’ve learned. It’s even called Commit2Act.

I’m speaking in the webinar series (so it’s virtual) along with Ann Handley, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Amy Porterfield, Lee Odden and Jeff Walker. We’re charged with giving you five actionable ideas each month that you then commit to trying, testing and reporting back on.

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Yahoo! Sees Small Business Dashboarding Need

by Jason Falls · May 2, 2012

Leave it to one of the web’s mainstays to truly being to solve the digital marketing dashboard problem! Yahoo! (of all companies) unveiled a sweet small business dashboard product today. It’s Yahoo! Small Business Marketing Dashboard pulls together web analytics, Pay-Per-Click and other paid search advertising, e-commerce, social media monitoring, directory listings and more into a single reporting home.

Long the lament of the online digital marketer and lip-service goal of every social media monitoring and management solution out there, the unified dashboard has been a pipe dream for many a digital marketer for years. Some platforms offer a glimpse at what one could be. Few have pulled one together that is definitively good. Yahoo! has made a better-than-most effort here.

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The Problems With Social Profiling

by Jason Falls · April 30, 2012

Jeremiah Owyang offered an insightful piece on how social profiling will work in the real world last week. We’re all aware that influence tools like Klout are being used to reward people with deals, perks and discounts based on their measure of online influence. Owyang rightfully predicts that what we’re seeing now is the tip of the iceberg, like it or not.

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Where’s Your Forum Strategy?

by Jason Falls · April 26, 2012

Social Media Explorer is gearing up to launch our first-ever research report called The Conversation. For the first edition of this new approach to market research, we’ll be focusing on the banking industry. You’ll want to make sure you subscribe to updates about our Industry Reports if you haven’t already to find out about the report as it’s released, though we’ll certainly blog about it more here.

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