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Successful Social Commerce Companies? Not the Ones You Think
Much has been said about companies that have been unsuccessful using social commerce. A new guide from Internet Retailer lists many that have experienced great success.According to The 2013 Social Media 300: Ranking E-Retail’s Leaders in Social...
10 Ways to Encourage Customer Ratings and Reviews
According to Nielsen’s "Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages" report, which surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries, 92 percent of consumers said they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other...
Contemplating a Content Curation Concept
Problem: Continuous Content Flood“Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.” – Eric Schmidt, Former CEO, GoogleDoes that come as a surprise? If, like me, you’re an “infomaniac...
Brands as Publishers: What a ‘Rebel Mouse’ Has to Say About Content Marketing
“Brands are dying to become publishers, but they know that they are bad at it. RebelMouse should help them be good at it, and help them engage with influencers as well.”That statement came from Paul Berry, former CTO at Huffington Post, and...
Bloggers, What is the Price of Your Soul?
"Marketing's New Rage: Brands Sponsoring Influential Bloggers" That's the headline of a recent article at WWD.com which has to do with brands sponsoring bloggers. "Barneys New York, Gap, Coach and other big brands are collaborating with...
Facebook Meets Goldilocks and the Three Bears
You know the story of Goldilocks. She tried papa bear's bed and it was too hard, then mama bear's bed and it was too soft, and then baby bear's bed, which was just right. Well, we need a "just right" solution for Facebook Pages. You know, they...
Social Plugins: Eight Reasons to Like Facebook
Considering its recent privacy gaffe, we can all think of reasons not to like Facebook. In this post, I want to list eight reasons you should. They all have to do with the new Social Plugins, which enable site owners to open up their content for...
Will Changes to LinkedIn Groups Mean Changes in User's Attitudes?
If you've participated in any LinkedIn Groups lately, you know they've undergone quite a facelift. This video outlines the changes: It doesn't appear that the changes have been rolled out unilaterally. In at least one group in which I...
Social Media Marketing: The Tail That Wags the Dog
I wanted to close this week by referencing a post written by uber-marketer Seth Godin titled "The distraction, the tail and the dog" in which he outlines the core of what makes a business run, "making sales, delivering on promises, overcoming the...
LinkedIn Continues to Follow Where Facebook and Twitter Leads
LinkedIn, the business-focused social network that sometimes gets lost in the shadow of Facebook and Twitter, has just launched a new feature many will find familiar -- the ability to follow a company. Think of it as LI's version of...
Business Blogging: Is There a Right or Wrong Way?
Search Engine Land blogger Ciarán Norris says there is no right way to blog. He cites Forrester's recent policy decision to require its analysts to blog at Forrester.com, which seems like the wrong path to take but, given the recent...
The Proprietary Web
I'm seeing a trend develop toward an Internet that is proprietary, differentiated and splintered. Quite the opposite of the homogeneous platform we were hoping it would become. The differentiation itself takes several forms. For example, one is...
Blog Posting Formats Best Defined by Type of Blog
A few years ago blogger Amy Gahran introduced a series of posts about blog posting formats in which she outlined seven styles: Link-only Link blurb Brief remark List Short article Long article Series postings (I'll let you read her post to get...
Social Media Works for Small Business. I Have Proof.
(Image attributed to Conspiracy of Happiness) A new survey conducted by Citibank shares some disheartening news: "Few U.S. small businesses have adopted social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter for business uses." The survey...
Today Marks Official Launch Day of The Digital Handshake
Today marks the official launch of The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media. Here's a three minute video which talks about it. My thanks to everyone who had a part in this book, and that's a lot of...
Twitter may be a tool but it's not a machine
Guy Kawasaki, in his post from December 2008, says Twitter is a tool (or "twool" as he put it). As an old-school purist who believes that the quality (read that "relevance") of your Twitter following trumps the quantity, I find the notion that...
The way The Digital Handshake will sell
My new book, The Digital Handshake, hit the stores shelves earlier than I anticipated, the result being that my plans to market the book are having to expedited. You might be surprised to know that publishers don't do the marketing for an...
Twitter hires ex-Googler as COO; yet another reason I believe they will sell to Google
(Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and Evan Williams, Twitter CEO)Twitter just hired Dick Costolo to serve as their COO, according to the New York Times. Costolo helped found Feedburner, a company that was sold to whom? Uh, that would be Google of course....
Social media metrics that matter
A recent SmartBrief on Social Media poll asked the question: What is the most important metric to track in social media? The results found that "virality" and "sentiment" predominated, not ROI. Virality (the reach of your brand...
Facebook, Friendfeed and getting back to basics
I'm reading lots of blog posts about Facebook's acquisition of Friendfeed and a number of bloggers are saying the same thing -- it's time to rethink our approach to social media. Here are three examples:"There's a lesson in Friendfeed's sale for...
