Back in the day, if you wanted to know how successful your marketing had been you had to use expensive and time-consuming analysis. You might have spent time putting together a direct mail package that had a call-to-action to return a slip with a customer’s details on it, and the amount returned to you would show how successful that campaign had been. Of course, the problem is, if you sent out 10,000 flyers, you don’t know how many actually arrived…

If you follow any brand news in social media, you’re probably aware of the criticism Toyota has been receiving over its Superbowl Twitter campaign. If you haven’t heard about it, Toyota wanted to promote its new Camry range, so it started numerous Twitter accounts to send tweets to people about the car. Now, there’s no doubt that having multiple accounts sending out random messages into hashtag conversations is spam. Heck, I’ve written about that here before, and it’s always a big…

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,…

Back at the end of 2008, I had an idea for doing something through social media to help charities. Thanks to some amazing friends and people like you that supported with your time and donations, that idea turned into a great example of how we can all make change if we really want to. The 12for12k project has raised over $100,000 for various charities to date – an amazing figure, given the “buy-in” was deliberately low, and the project took…

Over at Jugnoo, our goal is to help educate business owners on the social web, and really help them both understand and improve their visibilty on it. Part of our approach is to offer resources that will act as a go-to for news, best practices, tips and awareness for all the various parts that make up today’s business scene. Recently, we launched the first salvo in this in the form of Social CRM Insider. A blog dedicated to the increasingly important area of…

Over on Twitter, Toronto police are using the #RIDE hashtag to counter drunk driving this holiday period. Standing for Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, #RIDE aims to educate against drunk driving, and offer alternatives from the Toronto police on getting home safely. You’d think it’s a great use of Twitter, and an important topic to be aware of, especially at this time of year. And it would be – except for the shitdiots that have hijacked the #RIDE hashtag and begun…

So today I opened the Google home page to check my Gmail account, and I was greeted with this funky image: As you can see from the left-hand sidebar, the core products from Google are there for you to access immediately, as opposed to links within your account. Which makes me wonder – could this be  the first steps in Google bringing all their solutions under one integrated offering? If so, it’d really push Google+ into the mainstream and grab…

The following post is an excerpt from my chapter in Danny Iny’s new book, Engagement From Scratch: How Super Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same. It features lessons in community building and content marketing from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, Kristi Hines, Gini Dietrich and many more. A review of the book will appear later this week. I Would Have Posted Less Frequently I started off writing a blog…

Last week, Jay Baer wrote a post about how brands are responding on social media. Jay’s premise was that companies that can respond within minutes on the social sphere are sending out a far more positive message than those that dilly-dally. It’s a really interesting read, and the comments after the post sparked a great debate about Jay’s premise, and if we weren’t setting companies up to fail by jumping to action as soon as their name is mentioned. One of…

Fact – too many businesses still need to wake up and realize that social media is not “one of these Internet fads” that will disappear. Fact – because of this mindset, too many businesses are potentially missing out on extra business that could mean the difference between staying afloat and going under. So why the problem? One of the main reasons is that businesses – whether it’s the CEO, top-tier management or otherwise – are looking at social media as…