Category archives for

– Social Media Marketing –

Will Thinking Beyond Social, Ruin Social

by · May 13, 2013

The thematic meme running through the social marketing world of late is that we’re about to move beyond social media marketing as a primary practice to thinking more broadly about our marketing and our business. Social is part of a greater whole and social-only thinking won’t get you very far for much longer.

Part of this is driven by the social consultants threatened by those of lesser breadth of experience. Part of it is the reality that the industry is maturing. Social is now part of marketing. Marketing is almost impossible today without social.

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How to offer your ecommerce customers more paths to temptation

by · May 8, 2013

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes all the way from the UK via our friend, Michael Truby, Outreach Executive for Oxford based SEO company SEOptimise.

As a marketer striving to make your mark in this competitive world, you’re probably constantly looking for solutions to help you devise the most innovative marketing program.  One that is also quick, has greater reach, and lowers cost would make great business sense too.  As such, using the web to reach customers has become central to modern marketing. Within this online world, email marketing and more recently social media are two tools that have emerged as ones wielding considerable power and influence over customers.

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Lean In: Women are their own Worst Enemy in Business

by · May 7, 2013

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is starting an important movement with her book Lean In and online community LeanIn.org The premise is that there is a vast inequality of women in senior positions in the workforce and she is committed to opening the conversation about why. In her Ted talk, Sandberg argues that “women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world.” In corporate, she mentions C-level jobs held by women are 15-16% and have remained flat since 2002.

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Blog Monetization Without Advertising

by · April 29, 2013

Is it possible to monetize your blog, website or digital presence without advertising? Certainly it is, but only in certain contexts. Consultants or businesses can focus their energies on providing thought leadership and educational posts with the thought that interested parties will reach out to them to hire if and when they need the help. The organic content leads to search engine results which leads to traffic which leads to leads, and so on.

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Disclosures for Bloggers and Brands

by · April 24, 2013

Recently, the FTC released updated guidelines for disclosure in advertising. This 2013 update, titled “.com Disclosures,” supplements their 2009 Testimonials & Endorsement Report, which was one of the first explanations of the requirements for disclosure of endorsements, sponsorships and other payments from online endorsers, including bloggers.

The primary reason for the disclosure requirement is to assist readers and viewers in determining whether a blogger or endorser has a material connection to the brand about which they’ve produced content. It seems pretty obvious (to me, at least) why this is important to know.

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Threads That Entangle Your Crisis Communications

by · April 19, 2013

Facebook is rolling out its Threaded Comments for brand pages, and on the surface it seems to be a great tool for engagement.

However, not everything that is good for the one makes sense for the many.

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Social Media Managers: What’s With All the Whining?

by · April 18, 2013

I’m not a social media manager. So I offer my apologies in advance. In just a minute, you’re going to be thinking I could be quite a bit more sensitive. My wife probably wouldn’t disagree with you.

But hey, I’m sensitive about some things. I’ll unapologetically tell you that romantic comedy is my favorite movie genre. I would never balk at quiche (I might want some pepper sauce though) and I think George Michael is (was) great. These things count for something, no?

Now that you understand my softer side, I want you to hear me on this…

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Why You Are Ignoring The Most Important Data

by · April 11, 2013

Business is having a love affair with big data. In the last few months it seems that every conference and webinar I come across has “big data” on the agenda.

Big data is the allure of more. More information. More access to behavior. Opportunities for more sophisticated analysis.  The thinking goes likes this: If we know every move people make then we not only know everything,  but we can predict everything.  As business people we love it because the information is finite, scalable and measurable.

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HOW TO: Integrate Social Media into Your Website with a Homeland / Embassy Strategy

by · April 10, 2013

Editor’s Note: Today’s offering is a guest post from my friend and author Eric Schwartzman. He is a long-time, well-respected public relations pro, entrepreneur and thinker and is the co-author of Social Marketing To The Business Customer with Paul Gillin.


In this post, I’m going to walk you through a social media strategy concept known as the homeland-embassy approach.

It’s an idea shared first by Steve Rubel, though I’m not sure he meant to take it as far and as literal as I’m going to here, but the basic gist is that your website is your homeland and your social networking accounts are your embassies.

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