the star group

In our digitally-crazed world of Twitter, Facebook, SMS and on and on... the preferred method of communicating with a favorite brand for many is via email.[read more]

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The trends that will chart the course of the digital marketing industry for the year ahead.[read more]

How a brand handles a crisis is of course very important. The recent FedEx delivery driver debacle once again brought to light the need for proper crisis management. A nationally-renowned expert of crisis management weighs in.[read more]

The world of social media, where consumers rule the roost, has taken the power of suggestion to a whole new level and brand marketers and product managers and ALL marketers would be very wise to engage and empower as many ambassadors for their brands as they can.[read more]

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A survey conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Lithium, a social media tech firm, revealed a huge divide between what marketers think consumers want vs. what consumers really want when it comes to social media.[read more]

A recent study revealed that while 91% of business to business marketers are using Twitter as part of their integrated social media campaign only 15% state they generate leads from it compared to LinkedIn where nearly 1/3 of B2B marketers report generating a lead.[read more]

There used to be a time when a brand or a company could go a day or even two without responding to customer feedback, you know take a sick day so to speak. Those days are long gone and brands and companies alike better realize that right now.[read more]

Late to the party or not, Twitter has followed in Facebook's and Google+'s footsteps with the launch of their new brand pages and brand marketers would be wise to sit up and take notice of the new features coming to a Twitter account near them. Clearly the brand battle lines are being drawn.[read more]

According to a study conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth nearly one-third of all Fortune 500 companies are not on the social media bandwagon - at least not the Twitter and Facebook bandwagon.[read more]

Nothing like some good old fashioned competition to bring out some good old fashioned condescension amongst adversaries. Wait 'til you read how Mark Zuckerberg described Google+.[read more]

Slightly altering my thinking, I now think social media and word of mouth marketing may not be the same per se but... they are related for sure. Not like Uncle Earl who gave you socks instead of toys when you were a kid; no social media and word of mouth marketing a lot closer than that on the marketing family tree.[read more]

Major brands - from Walmart to Kmart to Sears to Old Navy, to name but a few, will be open for business on Thanksgiving night. As if that's not bad enough, one major department store is running a commercial which features someone stealing something out of another person's shopping cart.[read more]

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You have your Facebook page all set up and you decide to offer an enticement to get more "likes." Happens all the time, right? Well, you better be careful about what you promise in return for that "like" because people are watching... and they will call you on it.[read more]

Yahoo!, you do remember Yahoo!, right? Well they recently made a couple of changes that are designed to make them more social media friendly. The question is will anyone care for does anyone even use Yahoo!?[read more]

Should Teachers And Students Be Allowed To Communicate Via Social Media?[read more]

Ho hum, another day, another example of a company or brand exhibiting all the traits of a company or brand who simply doesn't get it when it comes to social media - in this case Chapstick.[read more]

The good news for brands and marketers is that 1/3 of brand followers are interacting via Twitter more this year than last year. The bad news is these same brand followers are very choosy about whom they follow with 80% following less than 10 brands via Twitter.[read more]

A great number of companies need to turn the spotlight on themselves for a true and honest evaluation of themselves before jumping into the social media pool.[read more]

What time and what day to post to Facebook could impact a brand's engagement with its fans.[read more]

Earlier this month actress Patricia Arquette announced she was deleting her Facebook account after what she deemed as a "social experiment" resulted in an alleged case of cyber-stalking or Facebook stalking. Now, a new interactive website provides a very real and very startling example of what it's like to be stalked via Facebook.[read more]