This is a guest post by Kevin Green. Would anyone be really upset if LinkedIn’s .com destination up and disappeared tomorrow? It’s safe to assume that recruiters scouring the site for new talent and current shareholders would be pretty peeved, even if the stock (LNKD) is trading at half price from the IPO. But how would the lack of an online destination really impact everyday users? Users that are tethered to their mobile phones and enamored by the promise of applications,…

This is a guest post by Stacey Acevero. The rise of social media has created all sorts of new opportunities for small business marketers to get the word out, but it has presented challenges too. The days of sending press releases to media outlets with the hopes of being lucky enough to get some coverage are long gone, morphing into constant opportunities to catch the next social media sharing phenomenon. Today, it’s not enough to hit just those traditional media…

This is a guest post by Bob LeDrew. I’ve been an observer of things Klouty for a while now. But I’ve been darned if I could work up a lot of excitement over it, positive OR negative. Until now. I got pointed to a post on the Klout blog today about their reworked formula. Since I haven’t any accounts linked to their service, I didn’t have much reason to care. But then I began to read the comment thread, and…

This is a guest post by Stuart Mills. “You are what you tweet.” – Alex Tew. I’ve found myself wondering whether social media is all it’s cracked up to be. Sure it makes it easier to connect with people from all over the world, from Nigeria to Nicaragua and from Pakistan to Poland, but how much satisfaction and contentment are we really getting from this online craze? Social Media And Value It’s common these days to see the youth of…

This is a guest post by Bruce Aristeo. It was late, and after a long day I stretched out my arms, took a deep breath, and let out a huge sigh. My hands reached out and I began clicking, swiping, and typing as my shoulders curled inward around my chest as if humped over in pain. My eyes were focusing and scanning the screen, my receptors acting as the light on a copy machine, pin-pointing each pixel and assigning the…

This is a guest post by Marjorie Clayman. A few years back, Yoko Ono released a comprehensive anthology of tapes that John Lennon had left behind. It’s a treasure trove of songs, some that you would know right away and others that he hadn’t yet gotten finished. One of the latter is a song with the blog title as the chorus. It is, of course, acerbic and hilarious, as one might expect from John Lennon. This song popped into my…

This is a guest post by Marcus Sheridan. I’m going to sound like the most conceited jerk in the world for a few sentences here….but bear with me. Over the past few years I’ve probably sold more swimming pools than any single person in the country. My company, which happens to be one of the country’s top fiberglass pool installers, has done quite well during this time period and I’ve been the driving force at the kitchen table, helping hundreds…

This is a guest post by Nancy Davis. How many times have you stumbled across a blog and felt that something is missing? They have great content. They even have a really cool photo to draw your eye in. The text is large enough to read easily. The blogger kindly responds to your comment, yet you never go back. Why? I hate to tell you this – you leave me cold. I read your post with excited eyes, but you…

This is a guest post by Eugene Farber. “How do you measure the ROI of your social media efforts?” It’s a question being discussed ad nauseum of late, and rightfully so. Social media investment is a legitimate issue that businesses have to face, now more than ever. So, being the problem solver that I am, I decided to figure out how to measure the ROI of social media once and for all. The quick answer is there is no answer!…

This is a guest post by Niall Harbison. The media landscape is changing right in front of our eyes – we have moved from a world where large organizations controlled the media we consumed to a more democratic time where everybody has a voice. Because of the huge shifts in technology, anybody can start their own media empire with a small amount of money, lots of drive and a creative mind. Two of the biggest examples are Techcrunch and Mashable…