What do you think sets apart a gold-medal effort in social media from a mediocre one? Is it ideas? Passion? Knowledge? Creativity? Likely those are factors, but most often the difference is more pedestrian: Resources. Most marketing and communications departments continue to be underfunded and understaffed when it comes to social media programs. It’s difficult [...]
Read moreFacebook Timeline is the New Tombstone
“There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.” – Eugene Ionesco, playwright People hate the Facebook Timeline. While many of Facebook’s most prominent changes over the years have caused a lot of hand wringing, none of them have caused as visceral a response as the Timeline. [...]
Read moreGoogle Decides to Kill Privacy
Remember when Google adopted “Don’t Be Evil” as its unofficial motto? You’ll find that little ditty at a yard sale next to a Bay City Rollers album and a skinny leather tie decorated like a piano. Because this week Google announced it was drastically changing its privacy policy and the side of sharing – and [...]
Read moreTackling the Woes of Social Measurement
The biggest woe in social media is measurement. No one has figured it out. There are no standards. There are hundreds of measurement tools. There are all kinds of metrics and statistics that can be measured. The great thing about social media is that you can measure everything, but the worst part of social media [...]
Read more5 Tips for a Social Media Crisis
You can take this to the bank: If you are a brand then you’ll experience a social media crisis. It’s inevitable. Look at it this way. No brand in existence – not even the most popular and best-loved brands in the world – has ever avoided a negative phone call, a snarky email, a compliant [...]
Read moreIs Facebook the New Email?
Right now, email is beating Facebook, but not by as wide a margin as you might imagine. And let’s keep in mind that Facebook was founded in 2004 and email was invented way back in 1972. So email has a three decade head start. I’ll also acknowledge upfront that comparing Facebook and email isn’t – [...]
Read more2012 Will be the Year of Social Catch-Up
Social media moves like the Flash. Zip! Bang! Boom! It’s fast – really fast. Stop paying attention for a couple of days and you feel like you’ve missed an entire movement. There’s always innovation – new technology, cool sharing tools, new ways to monitor and manage. Heck, there are new platforms and applications seemingly dropping [...]
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Santa Hates You
As I often say: the first certainty in social media is that you’ll make a mistake. The second certainty – especially if you’re a business or a brand – is that some know-it-all social media expert will call you out on it. So here’s a bit of Christmas fun for us all. Happy Holidays! [...]
Read moreThere’s No Such Thing As Quiet Time
Jack hammers are rattling in the background. A loud jarring noise that vibrates my windows and makes it difficult for me to focus on writing a presentation. Another distraction is a world filled with distractions. So it was a happy coincidence that as I was reading the New York Times this morning, I came upon [...]
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February 2, 2012


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