In addition to considering it my business to know and understand any new relevant tool I didn’t want to miss the boat. I actually think that this has more to do with why people are flocking to Quora right now. I also think it is probably going to be the very thing that ruins it.[read more]

This report looks at how 140 Social Strategists spent on social media in 2010 — and their plans for 2011 (read report). From this deep data, my co-author, Jeremiah Owyang, and I, found that maturity levels are a key driver of social technology adoption, and hence, social spending. (Jeremiah also wrote a detailed post about the report). I *love* data, so this was a particular fun and satisfying report to work on with the team (special thanks to Christine Tran and Andrew Jones for being our data gurus).[read more]

Prompted by a conversation I had early yesterday, here are two companies that you may not expect to tweet in Spanish, but do (I just realized that this is a very American, ahem…North American/U.S. standpoint):[read more]

TV HotJobs.com | Super Bowl Ads | SPIKE.comThe last time we visited with the monster of all local couponing sites, it had to do with the unorthodox way the company's founder deflected the obvious question from NBC Today's Matt Lauer. Groupon's Andrew Mason, in the wake of turning down $6 billion from Google, chose to obfuscate with some...[read more]

  Facebook is finally going to unveil the bigger and better new version of their social commenting plugin. The new now old version was updated in October and gave us the ability to vote up or down a comment. The new version of the social commenting plugin is its own entire commenting system like a Disqus or Comment Luv. A new...[read more]

Celebrating the just-past annual Community Managers' Appreciation Day, this infographic describes what makes a good community manager tick.[read more]

Originally I was going to write about how NFL players not playing this past Sunday were tweeting during the NFC championship game about  how Quarterback Jay Cutler seemed to NOT want to go back in the game because of a perceived injury to his knee, how he was not tough, how he was soft, how he lacked heart. Little did...[read more]

Tweet I had a bit of a rant on Twitter this morning. It was prompted by a big multi-page feature in the lastest issue of PR Week on Quora. The headline asked whether this new network could become the “new Twitter” and included a range of comments from the great and the good of the online PR industry giving their thoughts on what it means...[read more]

A total of 430 advertising agency executives participated in the 2010 Advertising Agency New Business Survey. The survey was sent by e-mail to a database of over 10,093 U.S. full service advertising agencies ranging in staff size from 5 to 350 full-time employees. The survey closed end of day, December 31, 2010.  The survey was...[read more]

In late March I’ll be speaking at Hook: The Presentation Conference about The Art of Storytelling in Effective Presentations. As we lead up to that event, which you can register for here, I wanted to write a few articles about the different aspects of storytelling (in no particular order) that I’ll be addressing. I wanted to start with...[read more]

If it’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years of studying social media, business, and the pursuit of influence, it’s that we are competing for the moment in order to earn and maintain a semblance of relevance. For businesses struggling to gain traction through Likes, RT’s, comments, clicks, friend and follower counts, the moment...[read more]

Yes, Groupon has been valuated at 6 billion dollars thanks to Google. But what exactly were they buying? What does Groupon do so well that Google can not replicate it or go vertical with it? That’s the real question. It may be that Groupon now owns the social couponing market and that’s why they are so tasty.[read more]

I have listened to a lot of CMR stations recently and unless I'm deaf, I haven't heard any imaging topicals for social media elements. No sweepers or promos for Facebook or Twitter. Still lots of sanctimonious self-promotion for the station websites. Because they have metrics they have to hit and still believe that whipping this white...[read more]

Quora is a new social tool that defines itself as “continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” Creating an account is free. Any user can ask any question. In most cases, anyone may answer the question, and other users rate the answers.Users who ask questions can limit...[read more]

Thinking of blogging, or, still trying to figure out if it’s even worth it? Your choice of a blogging platform (WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, etc.) has a lot to do with its success, along with your motivation and intent for blogging to begin with. First things first, let’s narrow down exactly WHY you have or want to have a blog in the...[read more]

This year’s been an important one for me. At the back end of last year I was in a job that was going nowhere and I was getting little opportunity to put my knowledge of the web, online marketing and social media into practice. So I decided to do something about it. I started blogging, reading, researching and putting time and effort into...[read more]

We all know the virtues of great content and just what it can do for you, your site and your traffic.  If the content you create can keep attracting visitors long after it has been published then you have cracked the secrets to creating evergreen content. In this article we talk about how you can get the most out of the posts...[read more]

This is always an exciting time of the year. You’re ready to go on holiday and have your well earned break and at the same time you’re anticipating a new year and the changes it inevitably brings. What will 2011 hold for you? What will be the major trends to look out for? And how will this whole social media thing play out? Here’s a few...[read more]

  It’s the end of the year and inspired somewhat by Seth Godin’s post yesterday and by Lyn’s post here, I thought I’d do a review of what has happened over the last 12 months and a bit of a look forward too. Not another ‘Year in Review’ post, I hear you say. Well, a little but not much. What I wanted to do was personally build on...[read more]

If you are not familiar with LinkedIn, or you don’t know how or why to use it, then this is the post for you. LinkedIn in is the Facebook for business and business people.  LinkedIn allows you to connect with your work friends, old colleagues and you can see where they work and where they have been. LinkedIn is your online Resume or...[read more]