Metadata or data about data has been an important topic in software and the web all along. In the old days we used metadata on a HTML page source to increase its searchability. That is by adding metadata or tags to a page we would tell the search engines what the page is about so that if someone searched for one of the tags, they would return the page in their search result. So a page on a given product or service (e.g. camera) could contain a list of relevant terms (e.g. photography). This is still relevant even in HTML 5 with the tag . (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/html5_meta.asp).

XML a Metaddata Language

The power of XML in a sense is in the fact that it is a meta-language — a language for defining other languages. So given an XML schema you can define a language such as HTML itself. Or I can define a language for expressing customers and all its related objects (such as “orders” and “contract”) for a CRM (customer relationship management) application. Metadata and tags have a lot of important applications in enterprise software. Topics such as metadata management, classification and taxonomy in information management and ECM (enterprise content ... read more >>

Last week, I met some interesting people and decided to see if I could find them on Twitter. The only problem was, when I went to search, I saw the following message: “Twitter can’t search because it’s bit stressed out from all the tweets.” I felt stuck, because I wanted to start following the people, and get in front of them as well. My room mate suggested that if I knew there user name I could simply use twitter.com/username and then add the people.

This turned out to be a very workable solution and I was able to add the people I wanted to connect with, but it also helped me realize that it’s sometimes too easy to get stuck using the obvious tools that an interface provides. Just because I couldn’t search for people, didn’t mean I couldn’t find those people if I had their usernames. But because the obvious tool wasn’t working, I had to find a workaround.

With any social media site, not just Twitter, there will be times when some kind of functionality isn’t working because the site is being improved or because it’s being overused and the functionality has to be shut down. It’s important to develop workarounds so that you don’t have to wait until the site is repaired. For ...

A recent Forrester Research report suggests that career opportunities in Internet and Social Media Marketing could be opening up in the next few years. With job opportunities opening up and with people in need of work, we thought we’d take the time to highlight how to get your own job in the social media space.

With Forrester’s 5-year forecast predicting that B2B interactive marketing budgets are expected to reach nearly US$5B in 2014, that suggests a near-500% increase in social media spending. While that only amounts to a bit under $55M — which seems a bit small if you’re considering a career in SMM — there are other areas in Internet marketing that will enjoy increased spending. This includes the Mobile, Email, Display, SEO, and Paid Search niches. If you’re interested in a career in Social Media Marketing — aka SMM — here are some tips that might help you.

1. Take your network pick. Choose which social networks to use. You do not have to use every single social network. Pick a few that are suited to your objectives. For example, I focus on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, though I used to have small but thriving networks in the social sharing (voting/ bookmarking) ...

by Ilana Westerman

Among other social media activities, executives at large corporations increasingly feel pressured to have a blog to communicate with customers and partners - but what does that mean? Blogs are informal journals of a sort, and have over the years become a popular way for people to engage in conversations with others in their industry or sphere of influence. But exactly how to have a conversation with your customers is more complex than it looks. Don’t take your blog lightly: it needs a strategy, and it needs to be on topic, credible, interactive, and valuable to readers — among other things. By conducting one-on-one interviews with people reacting to corporate blogs, we discovered some golden nuggets for success.

1. Negative is positive. It’s generally not a sapient tactic to use your blog as a mouthpiece to promote your wonderful company and its “leading” products and services. People want the real scoop: what are the issues customers are complaining about and what are you doing to solve them? What are the needs and desires of your customers that you are developing into valuable offerings? Where did your last product or service fall short? As well, ...

More and more social media-related jobs are coming on the scene, from social media directors to content marketers to community managers to everything in between. And there are bunches of folks with an interest in these jobs, but unsure how to best position themselves to get one.

The quick, hard truth: your interest in social media isn’t enough. It’s important and we’ll talk about that below, but it alone is not enough to qualify you for a professional position (unless the company hiring for it doesn’t have a clue.)

I’ve hired several people for social media positions to date, so I can at least tell you what’s worked in my experience, and what I’m looking for when I recruit. Here are a few things you need to be armed with in order to put your best foot forward for a job involving social media responsibilities:

Strong Communication Skills

At the heart of any social media gig is the ability to communicate with people. Not in marketing terms, but in person-to-person terms. If you cannot write well and speak articulately, you can forget it. Here, successful experience in sales or client and customer service is helpful, or another position where you’ve had to put communication ... read more >>